September Connections video: The third stage of the journey

In last month’s video, we explored the second part of the business transformation journey: business assessment.

This month I discuss that third stage of the process: evaluation.

September is often when manufacturing companies are planning for the new year, and it’s a prime time for evaluating technology solutions.

So this is also the time of year we get phone calls from manufacturing leaders in one of two situations:

1. They want to evaluate possible solutions immediately. This can be a good thing — they haven’t invested a ton of time in evaluating ERP solutions yet, and with some strategic guidance they’re more likely to avoid making (sometimes costly) mistakes along the way.
2. They’ve gone down the solution evaluation path on their own, but they haven’t been able to select the right solution — or worse, they’ve picked the wrong solution and wasted resources. In this case, time and money has already been spent, and they need to course correct.

Business transformation always requires resources — but with a proven framework for solution evaluation, you’ll save time, money, and wear and tear on your people.

Watch the video here to learn more about the framework we follow, and how it ensures success.

Video Transcription:

Hi, friends! Erin Koss here, CEO at Syte Consulting Group. The last couple of Connection videos, we’ve been talking about Syte’s proven framework for Transformational Change. Today, I thought I would mix things up a little bit.

Today is the third of four videos so we’re going to be talking mostly about evaluate. But I wanted to revisit quickly the framework and add some visuals to the conversation. Though I’m not going to go through these slides in great detail today, I will make them available within the contents of the video today. I hope they’ll be helpful to you. As we talked about the framework for transformational change at Syte, we talk about four steps: measure, assess, evaluate, and implement.

In the last two videos, we’ve talked about measure and assess and want to just briefly revisit those here. When we talk about measure, we’re really talking about looking at and evaluating if a company is ready for big transformational changes. This is that at the senior executive level. Do we have the sponsors involved? Is there a shared vision? Do we have capabilities and capacity in the organization to actually make these transformational changes?

When we talk about assets, we’re talking about gathering the information needed to develop solution requirements for your business. This is a deeper dive into conversations about people’s capabilities and capacity. It’s also a conversation and a deep dive into the additive business processes. What are the key business requirements that are going to need to be in place to get you where you’re trying to go? We have detailed conversations about that with our clients as we move into the evaluate phase, which is what we want to talk about today.

Again, we’re not going to cover the whole slide in detail, but just want to sort of highlight some of the things that we see among our family on manufacturing clients. Typically, this is a common time of year to start an evaluation phase because it’s really nice to have the product selected as you go into the new year and start that implementation within the first or early second quarter. Typically, we just find that that’s a great time for companies to do that. When we start talking about evaluate, companies come to us in two different ways.

One is they haven’t even started and they come in and that they’re ready to evaluate, and we usually ask them to take a pause because if you’re starting with us from the beginning, we’re an agnostic firm.

We’re not here to sell you a particular solution. We are here to help guide you through a process of identifying what’s really important to you functionally, technically and from a vendor perspective. We’re here to help ensure you make the best selection possible to get you where you’re trying to go strategically. When you come to us from the beginning, we get really excited because you haven’t stepped in the potholes or hit run into the red flags that are often common when this isn’t what you do all of the time.

One of the challenges we see is companies who are making products and services for the marketplace aren’t necessarily looking at ERP solutions, but maybe every ten years, if at all. If they get started and go down the path by themselves, often times there’s a lot more cost, a lot more time.

Often times, the failure rate is much higher, not having a partner alongside you who does this all the time. The other way we see companies come to us is if, in fact, they have gone down the path on their own, they pull up, they haven’t been able to select the right solution. Worst case, they have selected those solutions. It’s the wrong solution and so we end up with companies knocking on our door saying, hey, can you help us start again and go through the process?

I’m here to share with what we recommend you’re going to save a lot of time and cost ultimately. The other piece is the wear and tear on your people going through these types of transformational change projects. They’re a big effort for your people who are busy doing and running your company, and we’re asking them to peel off and focus on time on these special projects. Transformational changes are no joke. ERP projects are no joke. But they can be done in a way that is super empowering and enabling to your people and your organization.

If, in fact, we don’t have to do them over and over again. If you’re getting ready to look at an ERP solution, Syte Consulting Group is foundational to any business transformation change effort. We would love to have a conversation with you today versus when you’ve gotten down the path in the hopes of saving you time, money and wear and tear on your people. I’d love to have a conversation with you about that.

Next time when we get together, we’re going to talk about implementing. I’m going to share that slide with you here. We’ll put it in the content as well. For this video, we’ll talk a little bit more about this. Next time, the red flags, the road blocks and the risks that come into play when you take on the implementation portion of business transformation. With that, I wish you well. Enjoy the last few moments of summer and getting into the fall, and we’ll see you next time.

Take care!