Selecting The Right ERP For Your Business

foreign [Music] ER from triple helix Corporation and welcome again to our Helix Insider podcast I'm actually joined in studio today with two of my colleagues Andy Webster one of our senior developers and Lauren Gully who is our director of marketing and today we're going to be talking to you about how to select the right Erp system uh so first off let's talk about what is an Erp system uh Andy why don't you uh start us off an Erp is just basically like it's a single database that's got all the parts of your business that you can track in there like typically a lot of them are tailored towards manufacturing but they have ones for just Financial groups and things like that too but they'll cover things like ordering and then raw materials you know your bill of materials if you're not familiar with that term that's like what you need to make a finished good for your um for your company and then they'll also track you can also track customer orders so your custom when your customers will take

an order um somebody in your company will put that into your Erp what they need and then they could send out that order to manufacturing and then they can figure out how much of this raw material do I need to order to make this and so it kind of just tracks a bunch of different components of your system and you know then going on to like invoicing things like that so you'll have a list of all the invoices you've ever done however much you choose to keep in the end so it's a it's a kind of an all-inclusive way to track the heartbeat of your business and then you have that data for reporting and you know taxes things like that so you don't have to do as much work later on if you capture all that information as you're going that's kind of the general gist of what an Erp is and just for clarification what does Erp mean what's that stand for enterprise resource planning a little bit of a tongue twister for me and it's a software platform correct yeah usually they'll have like a uh they'll have

like a database that's on the back but on the front you'll have like a nice or kind of nice gooey to graphical user interface to interact with so you know you can fill out forms for orders or invoices and things like that got it yeah so in our world you know we're actually asked many times to help companies find an Erp system and we've actually created a process um that is for Erp selection Consulting that we call Fee zero and finding an Erp is a very challenging Endeavor for a couple of reasons number one the software companies that sell these um they're not cheap and they're very very complex and the sales teams are very motivated to try to sell these to our manufacturing partners and in so doing is that they'll do anything and say anything that the software can do to try to make that sale but the reality is these these tools are not always the same one size fits all sort of thing so we find in practice it becomes very challenging to validate that the European they're looking at is actually

truly going to do what it says it does so for that matter we've actually in our work have been able to remove some of the bias and the Mystery in finding a new Erp the other thing is that we're experts at finding these because we've worked with them for so many years however if you're a business and you're trying to find your next Erp system you know you've got a company to run you've got a business operate and sometimes finding an Erp in the process can be almost a full-time job and you know certainly if you're not skilled at it and you don't have the time then you know the ability to find that Erp becomes even that much more challenging so we recommend using someone that has expertise to help fund any European and not going right to the vendors and say does your system do this and most often the times they'll say yes of course but an objective Viewpoint is very necessary here Lauren why did you talk to a listeners a little bit about how we perform our phase here and what's entailed with

actually helping a company find their next year absolutely so I've had the pleasure of sitting in on a couple of different phase zero calls with our CEO Jason um and they are really comprehensive we really Dive In Depth with our different potential clients to really understand their needs and make sure that we are meeting and addressing all of their pain points so a lot of the times from my understanding we will sit down and we'll talk to different departments within the organization so everybody from production to operation to Quality and Engineering just some examples of the different departments that we've spoken to at different companies and we really try to talk to the um key players in those departments so whoever the lead of the department is the people that are really doing the brunt of the work in those departments on a daily basis we really want to make sure we talk to them and have a pretty detailed conversation about what they need in order to make their business run smoother

usually if you talk to the head of these different departments they already can jot down off the top of their head you know one to three different pain points that are really causing them to struggle and slowing down overall operations so we we really try to talk to them talk through those points and understand how and what Solutions we might consider implementing that will help to make their lives easier and help their business run smoother overall a lot of the times they do have current systems in place but those systems might not be meeting their needs or not all of their needs or their kind of doing Patchwork to make whatever system they have work and putting Band-Aids over problems that really could be better addressed by augmenting the existing system with new modules or Integrations that can help meet a lot of those pain points address them and make their lives easier or by even implementing a completely new system like we talked about previously and really finding somebody that

understands those systems and works with them every day and really knows the ins and outs of erps and what works for each business is really critical because another point that I see a lot we work with a lot of different Industries right so we could be working one day with somebody in manufacturing and the next day working with somebody um in a completely different industry and different Industries have different needs based on their industry that they might be looking for in a new software um so you really want to find somebody that you trust that does this every day that really knows the ins and outs of these systems and can help you find the best match for your business so once we've met with those departments and we've had had those conversations and we've sat down and we've gotten to know them and their needs a little bit better um we come up with a requirements Matrix so we'll detail out you know what their must-haves are their wish list items so to speak what would uh make their

lives easier we'll write all of that down we'll do some research on the back end and then we're normally able to go to them and present them with you know our recommendations as far as going forward what we suggest implementing and what we suggest um to go ahead and get that process started on their end right and just to add to that that Matrix is so very critical because it's sort of that detailed understanding of what the company needs um but it also allows us to match Erp systems that are out there to those needs and see if there's a right size right fit typically we start with like an over a list of over like a hundred different erps but by the time we're having interviews we've kind of whittled it down to like maybe the top 20 and then after the interviews are done the Matrix is created we're down to like a top ten and then by the time we look at a top 10 list and then go to the vendors and start to match suitability and fit with that Matrix we're actually narrowing it down to like

the top one two three recommendations and those things include things like price is also very very important because not all these are priced the same um some companies don't have a large budget so we have to be sensitive to certain Solutions might be a perfect fit but they're too expensive so we have to consider that the other thing that's really really a big thing right now is what they call a cmmc compliant cyber security model maturity levels which allows the organization to work with the Department of Defense and if they're required to have that certification the Erp system must actually match that and not all of them do so you could again have a perfect fit but if you're not meeting all of those requirements it actually creates um a problem that they have to be able to choose the right solution and on that I mean these things are never a perfect fit I mean if you have the best best outcome um you're not going to get all of your needs met and why don't you talk to the point about

like how how much of a good fit can you really get for an Erp system and then you know what can they expect if they don't get everything they want in most cases they're they're kind of a generic sort of thing so it'll be like a general it'll cover a lot of different cases and a lot of them are pretty they're pretty it can be pretty comprehensive but what what percentage level would you say you know is like the perfect that we get in our in our work in our history I I mean like 80 of the way there probably is pretty good oh so they don't ever get 100 then yes no and um you know that's where we come in later but um um so nothing's Nothing's Gonna fit you your company perfectly obviously but if you can get most of that work done with any with an Erp then um that's still gonna save you a whole lot of time and if you really want to make it more tailored to your to your business in particular that's something we do too we customize um window customize the Erp itself but we build layers on top

of it that will augment usually um on existing Erp so you can do extra things like live reporting maybe you want to have a touch screen with live data showing up on your shop floor you know so that everybody knows what's in production and who's making what things like that so yeah if you if you need help with something like that then or selecting an Erp or customizing an Erp then that's what we're here for you can give us a call and uh you know we're more than happy to help fit it to your business better that's a really excellent point because you know we've met so many companies that are searching for their their Erp whether they don't have one yet or they're replacing an older one and they actually have a tendency to think of it as a silver bullet it's going to solve all their problems once they have it and your point about you know 80 percent of fit is is very accurate I mean that is literally the best we've ever seen typically erps are far less than that most companies we meet who

are struggling are maybe 30 or 40 percent of fit so you know getting even to an 80 is quite an achievement but it's never going to be that 100 fit and to your earlier Point augmentation is is sometimes necessary which is what we do we run software layers that go on top of things so yes absolutely a fair point and so you know just a little bit about you know some of the work we've done today guys uh you know Erp selection Consulting if you're looking for a new one or if you're actually struggling with an existing one but you're not really ready to get rid of it you know we recommend the Europe augmentations because we can actually assist with um any final thoughts Lauren yeah absolutely so um definitely um we've worked with variety of clients across varieties of different Industries everything from Erp selection Consulting to augmentation really the key takeaway for me and for our audience I think is really making sure you know Erp selection from my understanding and from what I've seen

working with our company can be a full-time job it can be really easy to become overwhelmed with finding a new system there's so much that goes into it not just about understanding your business but understanding about how these different Erp systems work and and how they operate and what the best fit might be for your business and most people most business owners and decision makers are so busy running their own business they just don't have the time to invest in researching and finding the right fit um for an Erp so they either end up delaying that process and putting it off when it's really critical and their business is suffering and their operations are greatly slowed because they don't have an efficient system in place or they just um end up settling for a system that's not really a great fit for them so I think the best thing that we can really recommend is you know finding somebody to partner with such as triple helix who knows erps who does this on a daily basis who's worked with

a variety of different clients and many different systems like you said I mean we have a matrix of over 100 different Erp systems that we've worked with and that we've partnered with so we really know these systems and finding somebody that has that intelligence so that we can do the like work for you so that you're not taking time away from running your business and working with your customers to find a new system to better your operations you're able to work with a company that really knows those systems and can help you get the right fit for your business the first time so you're not wasting time and money and that you can make sure that you have the best fit uh for your business your employees and your and your company no actually very well said thank you uh Andy any final thoughts yeah just to bounce off of what Lauren said oftentimes when we're we will delay these kinds of things but honestly the sooner news start doing something like this something like using an Erp for your company

the better because it's kind of like organization in your personal life you know you'll be living in chaos forever and then you'll be like as soon as you get organized you'll think why didn't I do this sooner because it makes it takes the stress it takes a lot of stress away when um something is doing a lot of the work for you or you can delegate a lot of your tasks that you would normally be running in your business and things like paper paper forms and things like that and keeping track of all that the sooner you the sooner you do it the better because electronic really is it really is better in that it is extensible so you could you know the sky's the limit for what you can do with the data you capture well said well said okay well that's I think all our time for today I want to thank my two guests Andy Webster our senior developer and Lauren Gully our director of marketing for joining me today and uh we'll see you next time thank you everyone foreign [Music]