Sandclodd . things often go wrong and most importantly how you can ensure your ERP investment delivers real value to your business. We're not just here to talk, we're here to equip you with practical advice that you can implement immediately. ERP implementation is often viewed as a technical project but it's a business transformative initiative. A well executed ERP rollout can be a game changer providing businesses with real time insights, streamline operations and the agility to adapt to change. On the other hand, a purely implemented system can lead to frustration, inefficiencies and unexpected costs and as we all know in today's world very little businesses can afford that. This session is designed to provide valuable insights both for existing Syspro customers and those considering ERP for the first time. For our existing customers, we'll explore how you can maximize the value of your current ERP investment. Whether you are looking to upgrade to the latest version of Syspro, considering migrating from on-prem to Syspro Cloud or simply looking for ways to optimize your ERP. how your business uses your current ERP. This session will provide practical guidance to help you make these informed decisions. For businesses currently evaluating new ERP solutions, we'll share insights to help you avoid common pitfalls, set realistic expectations and understand the key factors contributing to a successful implementation. Whether you're just starting your ERP journey or actively in this process, you're looking at a successful implementation process, this discussion will give you a clearer understanding of what you look for in an ERP partner as well as a solution. With cloud adoption becoming a priority for many businesses, we'll also discuss how moving from Syspro on-prem to Syspro Cloud can deliver long-term benefits including greater scalability, reduced IT overhead and improved system accessibility. The transition to cloud can feel daunting, but with the right approach and strategic planning, it can unlock significant opportunities for business growth and agility. Our goal today is to provide you with a clear understanding of critical areas that can make or break an ERP project and to equip you with the knowledge and insight to navigate this journey successfully. To do this, we'll be covering five critical areas that can make or break an ERP project. The first is how to prevent failures. ERP projects don't fail because of technology. They fail because of poor planning, lack of stakeholder buying and underestimating the impact of change. We'll highlight the most common pitfalls and share proven strategies to set your ERP projects up for success. Secondly, is ERP a help or a hindrance? Some businesses hesitate to embrace ERP fully, fearing it will add complexity rather than drive growth. We'll address these concerns head-on and discuss how a well-implemented ERP can enhance efficiency, improve collaboration, and increase profitability. Thirdly, we need to ask the question, have you outgrown your current ERP? Your business has evolved, but has your ERP kept pace? Many companies work around system limitations instead of leveraging ERP capabilities to their fullest. We'll explore how to assess whether your current system is still the right fit and when it might be time to upgrade, reconfigure or migrate to the cloud. Breaking down data silos. In today's digital economy, data is one of the most valuable assets a business has. Yet, many organizations still operate with fragmented, disconnected systems, making it challenging to understand operations clearly. We'll discuss how ERP centralizes data, improves visibility, and empowers better decision making. Lastly, we'll discuss the hidden costs of efficiency. Many businesses don't realize how much efficiency costs. The financial impact can be significant whether it's manual processes, system bottlenecks, or outdated work rights. We'll highlight real-world examples of how businesses have used ERP systems to cut costs, improve productivity, and drive measurable and return on your best-to-report. To make this discussion as valuable as possible, we're not just sharing opinions, but bringing you data-driven insights. SysPro has collaborated with Frost & Sullivan to develop a comprehensive resource, a guide to successful ERP implementations. This report captures industry trends, best practices, and key success factors for ERP projects. Kendrick will walk us through the some of the report's key findings, give us clearer pictures of what separates successful ERP implementations from those that struggle. We don't want this to be a one-way presentation. We want to hear from you, your experiences, your challenges, and questions are not just meaningful, they are integral to our insights and the success of this discussion. If you're considering moving to the latest version of SysPro or transitioning to SysPro Cloud, we'd love to hear from you, your thoughts, your concerns, and expectations, please feel free to share them in the chat. If you're currently implementing or optimizing your ERP system, share your experiences. We can discuss what's working, what's not working, and how to fine-tune your strategy. If you're evaluating ERP solutions, this is your opportunity to get insights to help you guide your decision-making process. So as we proceed, please don't hesitate to drop any of your questions in the chat and join the discussion. We'll try and answer and address as many of them throughout the session. If you don't do that through the session, we'll answer personally after three email cross-comments. Our team will also share the link to download the full report in the chat, so please feel free to do so as well. Hendrik, I think with that, let's get started. Over to you. Brilliant, Marius. Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen. Wonderful to be here this morning. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening if you're dialing in from outside of the region. So yeah, so as Marius mentioned, I head up Africa for a company called Frost & Sullivan. Frost & Sullivan is a strategy consulting and market intelligence firm, which I think positions us quite well for this type of collaboration that we had with CISPR in the report, providing some strategic input into the broader strategy and implementation process. And in this case, obviously specifically relating to ERP implementation, looking at some of the principles and some of the practices. But I think, you know, just before we get started, I just want to marry and make, you know, in a bit of data. You know, it's always good to understand why we are here in the first place before we've started delving into some of the details of the report. About one third of ERP implementation projects overrun budgets. That is typically for smaller, mid-sized organisations. That number goes up significantly when you start taking a look at larger companies. And up to about two thirds significantly overrun their implementation timelines. You know, and one out of every four ERP projects are perceived to be, you know, complete failures. Now, these are obviously very concerning statistics I think given the importance of the ERP systems, as Mario has mentioned today's corporate structures. You know, hence the importance of this type of research. You know, we had some amazing discussions with executives of the manufacturing and distribution industry, you know, with the report focuses specifically on the mid-market, although there are some insights on the enterprise market as well. So not many studies that actually focus on the mid-market. And yeah, it's my privilege this morning to present a summary version of the report to you today. As Mario has mentioned, the full report will be made available to you in the chat function and also in an email format after the briefing today. I do apologise. I am going to clear my throat a couple of times today. I managed to bring back an unwanted little guest from West Africa on a recent trip. So I'm just recovering a bit from a cold. So I do apologise just for the excessive throat clearing during the course. Right. So we take a look at our agenda today. We're going to keep it, you know, nice and crisp, nice and short. We want to keep you here for longer than expected. We're going to start with a quick introduction, looking at the report aim, the report objectives, what have we tried to achieve. We're going to just quickly go through a diagnostic test. This is just critical questions driving ERP adoption success. Thirdly, we're going to take a look at monarchy and non-monarchy investments, which are really important. We will then move into some of the pitfalls of ERP implementation projects. And then we'll end off with some of the principles and critical for success when looking at planning for implementation and the actual implementation itself as well. Right. So looking at the manufacturing and distribution industries, I mean, they are very much, you know, some of the most latent sectors, I think, in the world today. You know, there's a reason why these two industries are early adopters of ERP systems and hence we use them as good examples, I think, you know, for the report. And the problem is not getting better. On the contrary, it's actually getting worse or more extensive. And, you know, whether you see it as a problem on the one side or an opportunity is really, you know, the ability to cultivate a data driven organisation, an organisation with the ability to utilise and leverage the data abundantly the abundance that we have today, you know, to empower all of the decision makers, not just technical, not just financial. In order to do that, you know, we need effective tools like ERP software, you know, that act as data consolidators, integrating information from other tools, you know, technologies and functions. We're hearing so much about artificial intelligence and all the amazing data that it can generate. But we need a unified system in order to collate all this information and actually turn it into so that we can use for good quality decision making. And therefore, CISPR partnered with Frost & Sullivan to develop a guide for implementation planning and execution in the manufacturing and distribution sectors. And, you know, there's typically lots of material on the selection of ERP, how to design the ERP system, but less so on the implementation success. And the reason is quite simple. You know, implementation is a much less standardised process, you know, than the selection side. And therefore, you know, these findings, you know, are really the guidelines. They're not, they're not sort of hard and fast rules. So if you are a couple of percentage points off some of the statistics, please don't despair, you know, don't start making sort of rash decisions, you know, rather see it as a red flag for further consideration by you and by the management team. And then I think just another important point around the report, you know, many of these reports are typically written for technical management, you know, as Mario has mentioned, you know, quite often, you know, ERP is very much boxed in the technical sort of arena, you know, within the broad organisational structure. But commercial and financial management play a massive role in ensuring implementation success. And I'll prove that to you during the course of the presentation. So this report is actually written specifically with them in mind, you know, it's still technically relevant in Shepson Farms, you know, but, you know, we very much try to be more commercially focused as part of the report, again, sort of bringing a bit of additional value, you know, to that, you know, to that overall process. Taking a look at the objectives. Number one, we're going to confirm the decision to invest in a formal ERP system through the diagnostic, it's really just a set of questions that you can confirm. You know, secondly, we need to look at some insights into monetary and non-monetary investments, which both need to be considered as part of the implementation success. Thirdly, we're going to highlight some of the strategies to avoid common pitfalls in implementing and maintaining an ERP system. And then lastly, we can, you know, some of the best practices and the principles that you need to consider, sort of when you do the planning or if you are in the midst of implementation. Right, so to achieve this, you know, we had interviews, we combined secondary research with primary research, we interviewed some of the customers, service providers, some of the channel partners across EMEA. And as I mentioned, specifically in manufacturing and the distribution sectors, the primary research, you know, took the shape of a survey on the one side to get us some quantitative data and then also complement with some in-depth interviews. So my team and consultants interviewed some of the executives in the industry on one-on-one basis with the intention of getting a bit more depth and understanding. So as you go through the report, you'll see that there are some lists, there's some sort of qualitative areas that we address, but there's also some quantitative components where we use some closed-ended questions in order to get some data out. The secondary research, you know, we've also supplemented the information, you know, we've also supplemented the primary research on the industries and on ERP in particular, all of the secondary research that we utilized, you can find in the report itself. And, you know, if you are interested in some additional reading, all of it is sourced, you know, clearly with some high things in the report. Right, so the report starts with a confirmation of the decision to either move into formal ERP or to change the platform or to change the platform. You know, sometimes, you know, we take on more technology platforms and, you know, we outgrow them over a period of time. So if you are sort of outgrowing your legacy system or you need to streamline data management, you know, integrate new technologies or platforms or, you know, think IoT, artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, and even some of the more advanced cybersecurity platforms that we have to introduce these days and want to protect organizations. Or if you are preparing, you know, you know, you know, you know, to expand operations across multiple plants, geographies, currencies, accounting practices, et cetera, et cetera, you will most likely answer yes to quite a number of the questions that we pose in the diagnostic. And all these examples or questions that we posed, you know, all apply pressure on existing systems, you know, so manual systems take, you know, a disproportionate amount of time, typically to prepare and to get out if you are in this position. You know, you might also be dependent on some specific, you know, you might also be dependent on some specific, you know, people with specific index or property about your operations, you know, to get the right level of reporting out. You know, so in short, you know, these things tend to introduce a layer of risk that we can avoid, you know, by deploying formal ERP. And hence this diagnostic is really a confirmation of the decision. You probably already intuitively know, you know, that you need to make. Right, so let's dive straight into the monetary side of things. You know, I think it's always a very pertinent question, especially if we are going to focus on the commercial stakeholders. So the research was quite definitive. You know, we showed between 2% and 3% of turnover for enterprise level implementations, a bit more on the mid-sized companies, about 3% to 5%. But what was extremely interesting is that the spend is definitely on the rise on the rise. So we spoke to the individuals about historical spend, about future spend, and there's a clear trend, you know, to transition into smart or at least smarter factories and operations. So nearly half of the responses that we spoke to planted double technology spend over the next 5 years, you know, which is quite a big number, you know, compared to what they already spent, which is already quite a substantial amount. And it underscores that recognition that technology is currently a bit a strong driver and enabler of both efficiency on the one side and innovation on the other. You know, we cannot innovate if we do not have good information and data that we can base some of the innovation, given the pace of innovation that we are exposed to these days. And these things obviously ultimately lead to, you know, greater competitiveness. Now, the variation in the spend is really a result of varying degrees of complexity of the ERP systems that were implemented, the level of technology and integration, so certain institutions had quite a lot of different technologies that they integrated into the ERP system. Some of them had more limited, and we can talk about some of the regional differences during the presentation as well. And then, in particular, process inclusion or exclusion. And the regional differences were quite interesting, and we can talk about sort of how Africa, you know, particularly differs from Europe and the presentation specifically related to the variation in spend. Right, so the second critical metric is implementation timeline duration. Now, the quantitative research showed about, you know, for enterprise level organizations about six to 18 months on average, I personally think that six months is quite optimistic, and you know, more as well most likely sort of contribute, I think, to the conversation later as well. But, you know, six months is really optimistic for a lot of people. What? We don't want to use as well as kind of dzięki for tuning in almost in 10 months. It's not very month and two years to implement the full ERP system, which I think is a better rule of thumb in general. The data was based on closed-ended questions that we asked, so hence you have the open-ended side on the left and then the right-hand side you have some of the closed-ended answers. But it's key to ensure that the implementation is long enough in order to ensure full adoption and effectiveness, yet swift enough in order to optimize resources and maintain momentum. We'll talk you a lot about the momentum component, specifically the change management element, which is really critical. Straight-charts implementations always lead to increased cost on the one side and definitely project stagnation on the other, which complicates the adoption and the change management components, which are so critical for success. Let's grab this water quickly. Right, so that brings us to the time to value dynamics. Now implementation delays plague a very significant proportion of ERP implementations. And it's really as a result of three key things. Firstly, we're looking at scope changes halfway through the process. Typically, changes that were not expected and hence it has a bit of a disruptive impact on the implementation timelines and costs. Secondly, resource constraints. So this can be in the form of financial resources, not enough allocated. Human resources, the implementation team capacity is not enough, or executive capacity. And then lastly, the complexity of business processes, which is also a critical component. And you'll see these three recurring themes, you know, coming throughout the research. It's a really important set of themes to focus on, you know, from an implementation perspective, and you'll see the research confirming that. But interestingly enough, quite a big differentiating factor, you know, is the effective use of external ERP channel partners. Now, you know, for most executives, you know, when they implement ERP systems, either the first implementation, it might be the second implementation, if they are particularly experienced. And the channel partners, you know, really bring a host of experience to the table, you know, and that experience can anticipate challenges because they've done this, obviously, across different enterprise or organizational sizes, you know, in the enterprise or organizational sizes, you know, most likely over different industries, over different types of manufacturing and distribution, you know, their ability to anticipate challenges are significantly better in the organization itself. And then as a result, and this is, this was fascinating coming out of the research, 80% of channel partners supported implementations were completed within the planned timeline. And this is, you know, compared to about 60% of independent implementations, you know, over overrunning the timelines, you know, by a good six to 12 months, which obviously, from a cost perspective, is very significant. Now, involvement channel partners, obviously does not negate the intimate involvement or the requirement to be intimate involved from the organizational side and executive management team in the whole process. I mean, there's no way that you can abdicate the responsibility for your ERP implementation. But the combination between other channel partner and the vendor and the company, you know, is clear is extremely effective. So time to positive returns vary quite a lot when we spoke to organizations about it, you know, so you'll see it from the graphic, but, you know, companies typically experience quite a disruptive additional or initial adjustment period of about three to six months, following which you start getting significant positive returns of investment. And these implementations, obviously, are disruptive, obviously, in the short term, but we do that, you know, for some of the long term strategic benefits in any case, you know, but it's important to keep that time to keep that time to value metric in mind as you plan and as you evaluate, obviously, some of your recommendations. Right, so then we get to, you know, budget overruns. And it's, as I mentioned at the start of the presentation, it is very concerning to see that, you know, even for our research, you know, about a third of the projects overran budget wise or significantly budget wise, in any case, that's, and that is a very optimistic statistic, and most of the existing secondary research gave us a high number. And, I mean, that's not a great ratio for financial directors of the CEOs. It is specific reasons given for the budget overruns are depicted in the pie chart at the bottom, you're looking at about 50% of these overruns attributed to substantial scope changes during the course of implementation, another 29% mentioned that they had unrealistic expectations of implementation process and outcomes. you know, which kind of speaks to the planning stage on the one side, and then the change management side of the others are managing those expectations. And it underscores, you know, the requirement, just generally to plan effectively and to use the experience, again, of the channel partner, yeah, and the vendor to do so. It can significantly reduce the extent of mid implementation scope changes as well. And if you plan effectively, you can anticipate some of these changes, you can either plan for it, or you can already be included initially in the scope. And then setting realistic expectations, I think, you know, we're all trying to be optimistic, we're all trying to be very aggressive with the implementation, but sometimes it's just not realistic to implement and shift the period of time within a certain allocation of resources. And that, you know, we can we can identify by working closely with the vendor, you know, or the channel partner combination. So the combination of which, you know, you know, will definitely reduce the disruptive impact of the overall implementation as well, you know, you know, so it's a really important element to address. Right, so now we get to some of the key components of all effective implementations, that is, you know, the right level of executive commitment. You know, ERP is, is very much, you know, traditionally, in the case, viewed as a technical product. Yes, to support finance and operations, but still largely a technical job, you know, but actually, the research confirmed is that the commercial and strategic involvement is a great determinant of ultimate implementation success. So intimate involvement from strategy from finance and operations, from the planning to the implementation stage is a critical element, you know, to see positive returns. And this includes quite a number of different things, includes setting the vision of the engagement and the engagement and the initiative, ensuring alignment, you know, with strategy, the advocacy component, sponsorship, communication, and then even getting involved in some of the direct training elements. Ultimately, you know, you're building the system for the future, you're building it for your business of tomorrow, you know, so current operations and future strategy are therefore both highly relevant, you know, to the design on the one side and the rollout. And it includes the granular view of governance structures and processes, you know, typically, you know, those components are contributed to or driven by the financial director, the financial manager, or the CEO, you know, so an intimate understanding of these elements will result in a better scope and a better, you know, planned ERP engagement. So cross-functional executive engagement can therefore be regarded as a cornerstone of successful ERP implementation. And here's the the magic number. So always, we always get the question, so how much, how much time, you know, do we need to allocate, because there is a very bad habit of just lobbing things on top of existing responsibilities. But, you know, the research show that successful implementation requires anything from 20 to 25% of your capacity during the implementation phase. Obviously, the planning stage, you know, it's very difficult to determine the rule of thumb, because planning can be very long before management or can be relatively short before the implementation. But during the implementation, you're looking at about 20 to 25% allocation of your capacity specifically to the implementation of the ERP program, you know, in order to make sure that you ensure success. And that number was quite consistent, you know, through the course of the research. Right, so looking at some of the common pitfalls, you know, again, this is, I think, where the storyline starts. It's converging quite well. You know, the question was asked in quite a few ways. We have qualitative questions, and there's some quantitative, closed-end questions as well. So on the left-hand side, you know, we've listed the common pitfalls as part of the open-ended questions. On the right-hand side, you see some of the fixed options that the survey, so they had some outputs, some closed-ended questions in order to get a good quantitative view. And if you take a look at that graph, about one-third said that inadequate change management was, you know, one of the major pitfalls, and another third about business process, you know, alignment. Now, if we want, if we can pause maybe just a second just on the change management, you know, for a moment. Effective change management always starts at the top, you know, executive buy-in, executive sponsorship, you know, executive, involvement, involvement, involvement, involvement, involvement, literally from the planning stages to the execution phase. It's critical, as we mentioned. And you need to expect resistance to change. You know, many of the benefits of a good ELPS system will only be perceived by the broader organization significantly after the successful implementation of the ELPS system. You know, the executive said helps set realistic expectations, you know, for the broader firm. And this can be regarded, again, as one of those very key pillars of good change management is setting realistic expectations because they're very difficult to do change management. Well, if you haven't set realistic expectations in the first place, you know, you can have a good change management team, but they will not be able to address, you know, sort of the challenges associated with unrealistic expectations if that's what they got handed. And my brief take just on change management, just taking a step back just from ERP in particular, but, you know, I've never liked a large change management teams, you know, the whole process. The challenge that we typically have, especially in the management consulting industry is that that consulting gap tends to be quite large, you know, when these teams exit, you know, and then the client has to grapple, you know, taking over some of these initiatives, which is never a pretty picture. You know, so I always opt for smaller external teams with a stronger internal allocation to gain some experience and gain some skill. You know, there's no way, again, that you can abdicate the responsibility to a third party, not the vendor, not the channel partner. So it's important to make sure that you as an institutional organization and your execution teams, you know, get involved and stay involved in that process. The key thing with change management is also it does not end, obviously, with the full implementation of the system. Change management is a continuous component that has to be driven longer term to make sure that the system is optimally utilized on the one side and also you get good quality data. And then let's take a look at business process misalignment. And this really does speak to a lot of the non-technicals, i.e. the commercial executives involvement in supporting both the development and the implementation of ERP. And again, you know, just volunteering some examples, just to run general business processes. You know, we have the privilege of designing large scale innovation programs, sort of technology implementations. And that's, you know, the problem is a lot of the problem, you know, the problem is not really a lack of good ideas, you know, in order to drive that growth and that expansion, but really it's the strangling effect of forward governance. And, you know, so what we put in place initially in order to protect the organization, how the organization typically grows, you know, is now hindering the adoption of new and high potential ideas. So, sort of, we just trust and so on, tend to spend quite a substantial amount of time, you know, fixing, you know, some of these business processes, before you can really see some traction in some of these new initiatives, you know, so the lack of good ideas is not the problem. Quite often the process that we've implemented and set in motion in order to vet some of these ideas, you know, that can quite often be the problem. And ERP is unfortunately only as good as the process that it supports. You know, implementing an ERP system is ultimately about preparing the business of tomorrow. You're expecting growth, obviously, as part of that process. So, hence it requires, you know, quite often, you have a bit of a rework of business process as well, you know, to align the organization with that tomorrow. And that is a complex endeavor. And that is worthy of allocating enough executive capacity, you know, enough change management as foundational elements, you know, to ensure future growth and future expansion. You know, foundational to a more flexible organization as well, you know, with the agility, you know, to change and adapt as required, given the, you know, the massive pace of change that we have to, we have to feel these days. Are we doing on time? Yeah, we're running well. Right, so avoiding some of the pitfalls. I think we've covered, you know, a couple of numbers of these already, but I think let's spend a bit of time specifically on defining the scope and the methodology. Now, again, drawing from the broader management consulting industry, you know, when we have the opportunity to construct this project scope with the client, you know, the result is almost always better and more relevant compared to when the client does it independently or when the client expects us to come up with the scope of the engagement based on our you know, you know, you know, quite often a limited understanding of the operational aspects and some of the strategic components of the company. You can spend a lot of time with a firm, you can better spend a lot of time with the executive management, but ultimately, you know, the knowledge associated, you know, with the internal operations and some of the finer strategic nuances, you know, are best contributed to by the executive management. Our bad definition, you know, the consulting team that you actually choose should have existing experience in the particular field of practice and the same, obviously, with the RP systems. So why not leverage that experience, you know, to actually scope the engagement? You know, there is obviously, and this is what we quite often hear from clients is that there's a risk of over-scoping something. So you're going to come up with a Ferrari when you actually need a Toyota, but these days, I think a more appropriate example would be a great bull motors of one of the Chinese manufacturers. Yeah, but if you have enough executive involvement, the chances are slim that that will actually, you know, pan out that that will happen. You understand? They'll make sure that, you know, what you buy is obviously what you need as well. So that risk is quite easily mitigated. You know, so in short, you know, you know, use the experience of both the channel partner and the vendor if you're buying directly, you know, from the start to define the scope and then manage mid-project adjustments as well, which they will be, by the way. You know, there's no way that you'll be able to anticipate each and every single component, but you can mitigate a lot of it. You can anticipate a lot of it. You know, you can most likely sort of prevent a lot of mid-project adjustments by making sure that the planning side is effective, you know, by combining the knowledge and the understanding of the internal operation, you know, with that of the vendor and the child partner. Right, so let's start sort of rounding up some of the best practices and principles to successful implementation. Firstly, we need a clearly defined and scoped, you know, IP implementation aligned with your longer-term strategy, so effective your business of tomorrow. Again, you're building it for tomorrow, you're building it for future, you know, so it needs to be aligned with that strategy, but it also needs to be aligned with your current business processes, your business of today, you know, so that juxtaposition between business of tomorrow and business today, you know, is absolutely essential. Thoroughly workshops, you know, with your selected friend and channel partner, you know, to be thorough, to be realistic in your expectations and also to expect challenges, you know, the right type of challenge. Given your organization in the industry and the level of rollout. And then finally, just fixating on that time to value metric from the start, both from a planning perspective, but also from an evaluation perspective in terms of making sure that you actually meet your objectives. Secondly, executive support from across the business. Yes, ITs are the COO, CTO, your CDO, but also strategy and also finance, operations, HR, sales. You know, all of these components will be highly affected, you know, by implementing, you know, by the material, ERP implementation will hopefully benefit from the process. So the involvement is crucial. Involvement also, not just in the implementation side, but very much in the code scoping element as well. So from scoping to implementation, broad representation across functional representation from the executive team of senior management in order to ensure you plan effectively. approximately 20 to 25% of their time allocated during implementation phases. And then, you know, very importantly, remembering that effective change management starts at the top, you know, expect resistance, resistance in manufacturing distribution industries can be extremely high. You need to anticipate it, you need to plan for it in the sun, you need to do on a continuous basis. Number three, looking at vendor selection. This is not something that we covered extensively during the presentation, but it is covered in the document. Industry fit and associated functionality. There is a tendency of moving more towards specialized ERP systems. You know, CISPR is specifically well geared for manufacturing and distribution, but there are also quite a number of other industries that are looking at the that they accommodate and that they focus on, you know, so that industry fit and the associated functionality is critical to address. Scalability and customization, the ability to scale with the business. You know, we have a number of smaller systems, you know, accounting packages, etc. that are focusing on ERP as well, you know, but you need to be able to scale with the business and customize it to a degree in order to ensure that you can actually enable and facilitate that future growth and expansion. So, you know, there are also, you know, you know, there are some of the integration capabilities of different types of technologies. As we mentioned, there are so many different types of tech moving into the industry with the intention of moving to smart factories or smarter factories. So that ERP, the partner network is really important to view as well. And this kind of speaks to the effective use of channel partners. You know, that partner network is something that the ERP firms, including CISPR, you know, spend a lot of time on maintaining, you know, the product is a lot of work. The level of support and training that they provide. And then, you know, all important decision making criteria to ensure that you line up a longer-term partnership, you know, with your vendors. So these are all important components to take into account when you select them. Lastly, you know, we're looking at business process alignment. You know, all good ERP implementations are fixated on business. So, you know, we're looking at business process to ensure full alignment with the organisation. Any misalignment will definitely lead to further inefficiencies, you know, which is exactly what we wanted to address in the first place. So, you know, it's ultimately perceived, you know, quite often is a waste of investment if there is a misalignment with the processes, which makes the change management process extremely difficult, the momentum, etc. And then importantly, just to remember that ERP, as we mentioned, is only as good as the processes supports. If one, fix your organisation, fix the business process, if the changes need to be made, then, you know, you know, you can see the business process. So, you know, you can see the business process. And then just a few good mentions, you know, as I start rounding up. Firstly, ensure that the task team has efficient capacity, you know, to allocate to the initiative. Sort of, we are all very guilty of quite often lobbying these responsibilities over and above existing sort of day-to-day tasks. That is not good thinking. You want your task team to have more than enough sufficient capacity in order to be able to address particular issues, challenges, concerns, and some change management. A good change management structure, you know, is critical. I think, you know, some of the best change management programs I've had the privilege of working with were highly structured in their approach, you know, don't accept anything less. We're not here to sing kumbaya to each other. We're here to make sure that, you know, the system and the structure gets adopted. Thirdly, rigorous testing. This was mentioned by, you know, quite a number of organisations the year before go live. You know, proactive risk management is really important. Sort of a documented risk mitigation plan. So, when things go wrong, because there will be challenges, most likely. And then finally, just my last point is just around training and change management, you know, never done. You know, it's a continuous journey to ensure we get maximum benefit from the LP system. You know, we need to build in feedback loops. We need to be able to refine the optimise, to re-engage the organisation, reinforce it in points. You know, so that change management process is just never done. You know, ultimately, you get maximum value from your programme. It's something that you need to continuously invest in. And when you do that, you've created a platform that can evolve with you and with your business. And then I think with that, that is my story. Marius, back to you. Thank you. Thank you, Henrik. Thank you very much for your time. Yeah, I think it's really insightful. And I've been, Henrik, just for me and you as presenters, I've been giving a few personal messages to say we need to smile a little bit more. So... We're taking ourselves very seriously this morning. I do apologize. I don't know if you're taking a few personal messages. I hope the guys that have... So we'll smile a little bit more. But just as a summary, Henrik, I think from my perspective, I picked up three key points for me. The first being, let's call it resource involvement. Resource involvement that is from the implementation partners, as well as the customer's perspective to say you need to be dedicated to the project. That rolls into change management. Scope definition, change control, all these types of things. And then it's being in this space for quite some time. And I think you mentioned it in your slide as well. You, we always say we need the people on the project that you, that the business cannot afford. And we, and we need most of their time to make it a success. Maybe a question from my side, that's, that's been a challenge over the, let's say, past four years is traditionally, the team projects were mostly on site project teams and dedicated space on site. Obviously with the new, new technology, there's, there's more movement towards remote implementations, which also, I want to say, complicates this change management and I want to say bringing over information in a team session sometimes is a lot more difficult than doing it on site. Maybe if you can just comment one or two, I don't know if you've, you've had experience or how that's done in East Africa, how do you guys approach these projects? And then what is the best way to, to maybe say guys, is it a hybrid approach? Sometimes on site, sometimes remotely, and maybe even specific resources that are remotely. Yeah. Maybe you can shed a bit of light on that. Sure. I think, I think it's a really important point in the, in, you know, whether you're implementing a new strategy or whether you're implementing a complicated, so your P system, you're, you're grappling with the same thing. And that the adoption component is quite difficult to drive. You know, if you're not face to face with the client, even the executive team, whatnot, lower down in the ranks, you know, we start doing the actual rollout. And I think the answer that we find in the case is definitely a combination of the two. So, yeah, certain things are just better done face to face. Certain organizations don't have that option, you know, so you have to plan for a more extensive set of, of interactions, you know, with, um, the remote staff, the remote management. Um, I think it's, it's, it's key, you know, for the executive management of the organization to create an environment, you know, you know, where input and feedback is welcomed as opposed to challenge. Um, you know, the executive involvement in, in initiatives that are being done, um, either remotely or in a hybrid fashion is extremely important because there's no way that you as an external vendor or service provider would be able to anticipate some of the challenges. And it's very difficult to read the room, you know, so we always had the, the opportunity from management consulting perspective here in the room, you can, you can see the body language, you know, you can use your emotional intelligence in order to reassess if it's going well, it's not going well, there are certain individuals, it's only convincing, you know, cameras get put off, you know, no comments are coming through, which is very difficult then to assess how the presentation or the information session or the training session is actually going at the end of the day. You know, so really motivating the staff to provide feedback, to be honest in their response, to anticipate some of the challenges. You know, these are the things that again, executive involvement is quite important. And, you know, we, we've given you that rule of thumb of about 20 to 25% of executive involvement. Certain organizations will require more. Yeah, I think, you know, it's important that you, you know, your organization, you, again, your workshop, some of those findings, some of those anticipated challenges, you know, with the vendor and with the, uh, with the, uh, with the, uh, with the, uh, with the, uh, with the, uh, with the, uh, with the channel partner with the intention of trying to anticipate some of the issues and challenges. Um, but I do think, you know, there are just certain things that it's extremely difficult to do remotely, uh, or in a virtual fashion. You know, ideally speaking, you want to do at least a proportion of it on site and face to face, you know, with a kind of component then doing, um, you know, being, being virtual. Absolutely. I totally agree. And I think a lot of informal discussions happen when you're on site, face to face, that adds massive value to the project. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that you, that you pick up and say, you know what, if I change this or that, you know, it's going to pass it back. So I totally agree. Um, and specifically on scope definition and business process alignment, I think that she's our methodology. If you can at least do the, the whole design phase, um, in, in person, that already makes it makes a big difference. And it's quite difficult getting that process is done, right? I mean, in order to be able to get the, I mean, it's a, it's a very interactive session because the organization does not typically think about these things unless there's some consulting occasion, whatever, running in the background recently run. So it's something that they really need to apply themselves to in order to be able to map out some of those processes on, you know, behalf of the, uh, of the ERP vendor, you know, so it's a, it's a very, it's an interactive process. It's an involved process. It's not something that you can also pay attention to, you know, 40% of the time and sort of emails and phone calls at the bank. You need to kind of keep track of that storyline in order to make sure you provide the right level of input. And it's difficult to do that. You know, if you are virtual stakeholders on the, you know, on the, on the platform. Yeah. And I think, and this has always been my approach as well. And you talked about business process alignment and selecting the right solution for your business. I've always said 80% of your business processes are standard. It's best practice. That's how you should be doing it. 20% of the customization or the power tailoring where you want to go very specific within your solution. That's where the value lies for you. And those, those are true. Yeah. Yeah. It was kind of interesting. And for some reason, I can't remember we actually spoke about it in the presentation, but you know, we, there's quite a bit of difference between African implementations and European implementations where a lot of the African focused implementations were more standardized. So they opted for a larger proportion that were non -customized and hence the implementation frameworks were more standardized. And European ones, you know, often ended up being about 12 to 24 months as opposed to the six to eight months. You know, so again, those regional nuances, the differences, you know, and the vendor and the channel partner is really best placed to provide that level of perspective, you know, to the organization when you start planning. Yeah. Just looking at the questions, I think one that is very, I want to stay aligned to the presentation today is how do you manage, scope change, and then how do you manage that process? And I think from my perspective, let me give my two cents is obviously duration of project plays a big role in scope change because businesses these days change quite significantly and the rate of change is quite high. So I know we talked about, I think my experience as well, I think a six to nine month is a sweet spot for mid-sized project. And if you can obviously design and have agreement, and as I said, if we can have that stakeholder engagement and business engagement upfront to make sure that we've got a clear view of what happens from a project perspective and what we need to deliver. We've even pulled it forward quite a bit, even in the selection of Europe, we even spent three or four days with a customer to do scope definition before we even want to say quote or move forward from a project perspective. So obviously defining requirements right up front and agreeing to those requirements, keeping it within a specific timeframe and having that people involvement and not, and it's difficult because people move, but if you can have your project team or the same key stakeholders in the project remain constant to ask the delivery of the project, that for me is massive in terms of just keeping what you need to deliver the same. I don't know what you would think. Completely agree with you. You know, as you mentioned that six to nine month implementation is a really good timeline. It ensures, and I think I mentioned in the presentation that it's long enough, not to be thorough enough, you allow a bit of scope also for certain changes, but then also not too long that you end up with a lengthy implementation where it's very difficult to do the change management and keep momentum with the initiative if it's an 18 month engagement. Sometimes not hard organization, they need to do that. But the other component is to expect a certain level of change through the course and scope changes through the course of the engagement. Even if you do, you know, you know, the best possible planning, you workshop it, you know, you still need to allow it, it's a bit of breathing room for certain changes through the course of the implementation. You know, I always, I always compare it to organizing a cupboard. You know, if you organize a cupboard and you have literally just 100% enough space for each and every single thing you want to put in, every single time anything changes, you buy anything else or anything else you can still buy a new cupboard. You've got to buy a new cupboard if you've got to change the organizational system, right? So now all of a sudden, it's quite a big thing. Where is it? If you just leave that 5% or 10% better room in that process as much as you're just a slot in a couple of additional components, do a bit of change management, you know, on the back of that, as opposed to doing these massive, you know, changing, oh goodness, you need to change timeline now and, you know, you need to bugger the executives around and it's more time and allocation that they need to do to the initiative. Just allow a bit of breathing room and it enables you just to make sure that if the change comes and it will come, you know, it doesn't have such a disruptive impact on the actual rollout process. You know, so the planning and all the other components, you know, all very important. You know, we all have sort of, you know, those themes, as I mentioned, they kept on coming back, you know, we usually have a single aspect, whether it be best practice or pitfalls or, you know, some of the other elements of the research, you know, they kept on coming back and that scoping process is really important. But you need to allow a bit of breathing room just to make sure that you end up in a scenario where you plan for 100% and if it's 101%, you're ending up with a really big problem. Yeah, I think just, I think just trying to wrap up, I think maybe last, last question or comment from my side, obviously, and I think it's even with the current, we now talked about a hybrid model and how we deliver scope-based project management, the project management from a vendor perspective or partner, but in my experience, also project management, specialists, work and able to adjust to their molecular biology. And so, the evidence of this Asians, what is the problem? and then obviously from a monetary or a project budget perspective as well, just to keep everybody on the same page. I think the biggest issue is the surprise. If somebody gets a surprise and says, listen, nobody thought about this and there's a massive impact from that. So to minimize that surprise within the project. Again, completely agree. I think the dedicated project management office is really important. If you take the approach that change management will run after the implementation is finalized in order to optimize your system, then it means that you want individuals that are experienced by the time the implementation is done. Now, the majority of these individuals that will be allocated, they might have done one implementation, maybe two if you're lucky, but it's not individuals that are as experienced as the vendor or the channel partner in order to do these things. So you want them to gain as much as possible experience during the implementation process so that they can apply that experience after the vendor is exited, after the rollout has been completed. So maximizing that experience, applying that and then taking the approach to say that there will be a proportion of change management that is required longer term. If you want maximum value out of any technology to implement, it's an ongoing process. You are on a continuous basis monitoring the output from it and monitoring the value that you're getting from it. If you're investing, again, the return investment. If you are investing in a manufacturing plant or something physical, you do regular checks whether you're getting your value out of that investment. There's no difference between the IT investment on the one side and the physical infrastructure on the other side. We don't make any differentiation. When we evaluate IT investments and regular investments and infrastructure, you still want to make sure that the capex is fixed. You still want to make sure that you have a very good understanding of operation expenses. You want to make sure that you have a very good understanding of the return of the return of that investment and the timing of those returns as well. There's no chance that you'll invest in a physical infrastructure and you do not have a good understanding of the timing of the returns. Too many times we've sat in boardrooms with technology investments and you hear, well, we can do this or we can do that. If you apply it here, you can do something different. That does not have any space, in my view, in the boardroom. The ERP system must have a clear understanding of what it will deliver over what period of time. And then you know what to measure, you know, you know, how to evaluate the implementation as well. That's a beautiful, longer term vision and approach, I think, to the whole process. Andrew, thank you very much. Thank you, everybody, for your time. It's been great having a chat. As I said, I mentioned, we'll share a report. It's all downloadable and you guys can have a look at it. I hope you have a great rest of the week. Andrew, once again, thank you for your time. And everybody, have a good Tuesday. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, everyone. Cheers. Bye-bye.