May 2022 Connections video: Why an ERP-agnostic partner is your new best friend

Sometimes our phone rings, and there’s someone in dire straits on the other end of the line.

Usually in these cases, a privately held or family-owned manufacturing company has selected an ERP solution without any outside counsel. They’ve taken advice from the solution provider that sold them the software … and let’s face it, advice from software vendors often comes with a truckload of bias.

These companies come to us because they’ve either selected the wrong solution, or they’re not set up to successfully implement the software they’ve just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on.

In today’s video, I share more about why it’s important for you to have an agnostic partner on your side when you’re choosing an ERP solution — and why getting the right counsel can get you better results while saving wear and tear on your team.

Watch the video:

Hi there. Erin Koss with you today, CEO of Syte Consulting Group. I want to talk a little bit today about having an agnostic partner in your back pocket when you’re doing an ERP solution selection. So let me paint a picture for you that we run into frequently, and that’s what we call the phone call for the rescue project. Often times, we find that our family-owned manufacturing clients have gone out and selected an ERP solution without outside council other than the solution provider that sold them the software. It’ss themselves or yourself.

As you can see, it comes with a truckload of bias when it’s done that way, and often things are missed. There are several worst-case scenarios. The first is that the wrong product is purchased altogether, which we’ve had clients come to us and say they’ve spent anywhere from $200 to $600,000 in those circumstances. We’ve got two or three scenarios that look like that. Ideally, you’ve selected the right product, and maybe you’re just not positioned for implementation like you expected because you just didn’t know what you didn’t know. We always recommend that you align yourself with a truly agnostic partner. What we mean by that is someone who is not making money or has any bias toward or skin in the game relative to the product that you choose to put in as a foundational element of your growth and scaling effort for your organization.

Sure enough, that’s something that we’ve done for the last 25 or 30 years. Are we biased in this conversation? Absolutely. But it also is coming from the heart as we have worked with family-owned manufacturing companies for over 25 years, helping them to select and implement ERP solutions and what we want to avoid is rescue projects.

What we find every single time is the investment of time and money that you make right out of the gates after you make your selection. Using a partner that is agnostic will result in a far better outcome in terms of your implementation time and less wear-and-tear on your team. Hopefully, this will reduce the chances of you re-doing a process because you’ve done it correctly the first time. If you’re in a situation where you need to grow and scale, you’re a mid-sized, family-owned manufacturing company and you might be asking yourself what to next. I would highly suggest picking up the phone and giving us a call. We’d love to chat with you for 30 minutes and just talk about what your options might be and how you might approach it. Do you have a team inside your organization that is set up for success? What does that look like? We’d love to help advise you where we can and be helpful. With that, give us a call when you get a chance and we’ll talk. Until then, take care.