Author: Alex Chow

Why you should build a healthy relationship with your data

Overview

Having worked with Dynamics 365 Business Central (Dynamics NAV) for years, one of the biggest concerns I have when working with clients is receiving a really big Excel file with a message saying “my numbers don’t match! Please match it up for me!”

While I always love a good challenge on solving complex problems, after some time, these types of questions concern me. Most of the time, the client did not do their work on looking through the spreadsheet and did not try to figure out where the numbers went wrong before sending them to me.

Part of the challenge with working with anything new is to put in your own work and your own time. You can see the process as a time investment, but also the understanding of how to diligently figure out where the numbers are going when you perform certain actions within Business Central.

Being Young and…Not so Wise

Back in the days when I was a young consultant, I would always solve these big Excel sheet problems myself and help customers make sense of the numbers in the huge spreadsheet.

However, a few months later, the clients would inevitably come back with another big spreadsheet asking me to figure it out for them again…And again and again.

Hey, these were free billable hours, so why not?

Over the years, I realized what I was doing was wrong.

All the knowledge that I’ve built analyzing the data and tracing the transactions through Business Central was almost impossible to transfer to my clients. While I can tell them where to go to do the tracing, knowing how to do it, what tools to use, and what fields to look at is really the key.

More often than not, when I was telling the clients where to do the tracing, the clients kind of nodded, acknowledged what I said, but in the end just took my answer as is, without really understanding how to get there.

These hours I spent getting to know my clients systems and data, in the end, was lost – and that’s something they could have benefited from if they did it themselves.

Knowledge Lost

Effectively what I was doing was showing the client how to fish, but in the end, I was giving the client the fish. By doing all the work myself, I was robbing my clients of the ability to gain further understanding of their own data and how they relate to Business Central (Dynamics NAV). More importantly, they wouldn’t grasp the key understanding of what tools to use so they can navigate their data within their system.

Even if I figured out the mystery, the client did not get the key knowledge of how to figure it out themselves the next time their numbers don’t match. All the knowledge about reconciling between their Excel sheet and Business Central (Dynamics NAV) was then lost.

Instead, I realized that the smarter thing to do was to teach the users how to fish and insist on the clients to do the fishing themselves! In the first few tries, I would walk through with the user on the data they’re looking at, then assign them the tasks that I would do if I was doing the work. They would come back with the results from the first lists of tasks then I would guide them to the next set of tasks, and so forth, until the conclusion is reached.

Conclusion

We all need help with what we do. We grow up with the tradition of transfer of knowledge, by learning from someone more knowledgeable. With more knowledge about your surroundings, life will inevitably get easier because then, all complex problems can be solved without too much effort.

One big part of having an easier work life is to understand what’s going on with your operation and how it translates into your system. There’s no way to build this knowledge without doing your work yourself beforehand. You need to understand your tools and understand your data.

I find that the users that are able to pick up the system the quickest are the ones that come to me with specific questions confirming their suspicion.

For example, if my clients asks whether they can change an account setting on the General Posting Setup to affect certain sales transactions because they want their financial reporting to look a certain way – rather than asking me why their revenue accounts don’t match the financial reports they want – that’s a sign that eventually, they’ll be able to figure everything out by themselves.

Building an understanding of your data and your system can take more time at the beginning, but it pays off in the long-term, and in the meantime, AP Commerce is there to get to know them!

Importance of Testing

Overview

So, you’ve decided to switch to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and finished the hard work of development, migration, and training. Now you’re ready to go live, right? 

But, I’ll bet there’s one thing you’ve unknowingly neglected. That’s testing the new software. After the implementer tells you that they’re done with the development and migration, the first thing you need to do is to run testing. 

Testing might sound simple, all you need to do is run through a couple of scenarios, and you’re good, right? I wish it were as simple as that, but often it isn’t. 

After the implementer hands you the keys to the software, testing is an investment you and your team need to take seriously. Doing that will set you up for future success.

Testing is essential because it allows the users to:

  • Get familiar with the new system
  • Find potential problems
  • Discover unknown features
  • Overcome the fear of change
  • Establish confidence in your team

Make Sure Users Understand the Importance of Testing

It’s no secret: people are much more likely to take advice from people they trust.

The first step to implement an effective testing process is to build trust with the people you work with – and more specifically, the ones who are going to use the new system.

Even though we always emphasize on the importance of testing, most users won’t follow through with proper testing, even if they promised they would.

Why? There are many reasons. Often, the users are not aware of how important testing is. More often, however, they are just busy dealing with daily challenges and crises at work. 

This is why building trust with the company is key, and also having a clear and easy process ready for them. You, as the implementer, should be the subject-matter expert, but you also should see yourself as a mentor to managers, to help them help their employees.

Again and again, you need to explain the benefits of testing and that testing will benefit the user and their team. More importantly, emphasize on the fact that it’s not to waste their time; but rather is an investment that pays long-term dividends.

Time is one of the biggest reasons users will avoid testing, but time is also one of the reasons testing is so important.

Some of the main benefits that come from testing are to save time. Becoming familiar with the new system, solving any problems, and discovering all of the features will save users time in the future.

It’s essential to explain that while testing requires time upfront, it will save them precious time in the future.

Work With The People in Charge

The first important way of implementing a successful testing operation is to know your place: You’re not the one in charge, but you’re there to make sure that those who are thrive.

As a consultant, you’re not an employee but an advisor. The key to success is communication. You need to make sure that managers understand that you’re here to support their success; not to do everything for them. You need to set the stage for them to have all the necessary keys in their pockets so that whenever a problem occurs, they know what to do.

As it is the manager’s responsibility to oversee the testing, your job is to make sure that the testing is done properly and more importantly, they don’t cut corners. You also need the manager to be aware of how important test runs are.

If the management team of the company asks you to manage their people as if you were their boss, one thing you need to do is to get the customer’s managers to take the lead.

In order to make sure you don’t get a phone call every day with questions, you should have a plan that includes milestones for the use to be complete – so the testing process is faster and easier because the users have clear directions to follow. A good and simple plan will also give the managers something to look for and help them communicate with their team.

Again, explain the benefits of testing to the managers, and make it clear that in the long term, the company is going to save time and money by making sure everything is running properly. Don’t forget: the best offense is a good defence. 

As with anything new, it will take time for everyone to grow comfortable with the new system. It won’t happen overnight, but if everything is done strategically and in an organized manner, the risks of encountering problems in the future are going to be reduced and your clients are going to save precious time. By doing so, your clients will be more likely to recommend the system to other companies.

Make Sure The Process Is Easy

As an implementer, part of your job is to make the customer test the system, and more importantly, make the testing easy.

You can’t, and shouldn’t, sit and look over their shoulder and watch them run through different tests. That would be a waste of your time because that’s not what you are being paid for, and you want the users to run tests in their natural environment.

The users often forget that testing requires a lot of extra time and effort, on top of their regular workload; which is why you need to ease the process for them as much as you can.

The implementers can’t just mandate training. That will only make people want you to leave faster. Instead, provide them a clear step-by-step testing process that they can implement.

To Sum It Up

If implementers don’t do their job correctly, the testing won’t be successful.

Proper testing will benefit the users for years to come and make the new system much more enjoyable to use.

If the user is running into error after error, or they aren’t able to find the features they need in the new system, it will cause frustration, and make the system – or worse, you – look bad.

When the implementer does his/her job correctly, the transition from implementation to testing and regular use should be smooth. The users will still need to build confidence in the system and may encounter some problems, but testing will help prevent many unnecessary struggles with the system.

How to Avoid a Mutually Assured Destruction While Implementing a New ERP System

Overview

While working with companies on ERP implementation (in our case, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central), what I tend to notice more often than not is that companies know what they want to get out of ERPs, but not how to do it. The result is that managers create their own chaos that makes people go in different directions. It also means that internal managers often sabotage their own ERP implementations.

This article is part of a series regarding how internal managers can implement better new ERP systems.

All roads lead to Rome; but some of them are more steady than the others.

Common System for a Common Goal

It’s not rocket science: when companies decide to switch to a new ERP/accounting software to address specific problems they’re facing, it’s for a specific reason. Usually, it’s because they have reached the limits of their current software, or it would be too expansive to do otherwise.


While the new ERP offers a positive cost-benefit outcome, managers need to come up with common goals when implementing the new system to ensure a successful implementation if they want to avoid a mutually assured destruction

After companies shop and find the perfect system for them, the steps that follow typically are planning, configuring and then implementing the software.

One modest but extremely important goal, in most cases, is to just go live with the system. Even though this is a simple and vague goal, it allows parties involved to be working on the same objective, which is to go from the old, legacy software to the new one. It also means transfering crucial information to the new system the way that fits your company’s culture and ways of working.

Here are the do’s and don’t when it comes to implementing a new ERP system.

Too Much Potential is like Too Little

There’s one thing managers need to keep in mind while implementing a new ERP system: time is money. The potential offered by the new software may appear limitless; but while this perception of infinite improvement may prenail for a while, having too high expectations from this change could have the very opposite effect.

This is why a strategy is necessary.

A new ERP could help your company with (but is not limited to):

  • Automation
  • Better information for customers
  • Accuracy
  • Process re-engineering
  • Better analysis/reporting for management

While the ultimate goal of going to a new software is to make everything better, too much of a good thing may turn out to be bad. 

Think about it: more often than not, vendors promise the moon to their clients. When a manager watches the software’s demo, he/she will think the possibilities are infinite. But often, the honeymoon phase doesn’t last. But keep in mind that these people are salespeople, and your company needs to have a down-to-earth, strategic approach on how to implement the software. Make sure you know from the beginning what your company wants to get from the system, so you know what to prioritize.

This is when the software genius comes in, and the learning curve starts to go up. Shortly after the product is acquired, the manager will look at it, learn about the new features to figure out how they can benefit the company. Suddenly, so many problems the company had with the new system are going to be solved. Suddenly, a whole new world is going to be opened to your company. Then, an infinite list of ideas will come out of the manager’s expectation of this new system.

One thing to keep in mind when implementing a new ERP is that when working with developers, they are likely to say yes to most of your requests. Developers tend to see every request from a customer as a challenge, without necessarily thinking about budgets.

The result: developers overpromise and managers run wild.

To avoid this situation, having a specific end goal in mind, with specific areas to improve is the solution.

Most people do cost-benefit analysis based on the cost and the improvements that it would bring. However, the time to get it up and running is often overlooked.

When you start a bunch of projects, especially during a period of high stress such as moving to a new system, you end up stretching your resources very thin. Too often, resources are stretched indefinitely and the end goal is so evasive that even the manager tends to forget it.

This is why successful ERP implementations begin with specific, realistic goals that fit your company’s culture and needs, and will save you time and money.

Conclusion

I’ve worked with many companies in the process of implementing new software. While I have a complete confidence that they improve the companies’ efficiency and in the long-run make everybody’s life better, my experience has shown that not having a full-length implementation strategy can cost time and energy; and since time is money, investing in time-saving strategies is the way to go.

It’s simple: focus on the main task at hand. Go one step at the time. While it may take slightly more time, the end result will be less confusion and better results.

The last thing you want, when implementing a new system, is to yield fear and uncertainty.

Fear and uncertainty lead to failure.

Strategy, coherence, and preparedness lead to success.

Ways You Are Sabotaging Your ERP Implementation. Going Parallel.

Overview

A continuation of an article published last time.

This is another one of the biggest causes of the owners/management causing the demise of their own ERP projects.

Going Parallel

Most proponents will state that going parallel is the safest way to ensure that if the new system doesn’t work, you can safely go back to the old system and not have any loss of data.

This sounds really good on paper, it’s actually abominable in practice!

Here are a couple of reasons why:

  1. Not enough time in the work day for the user to do twice the work. Imagine your work day, now do it twice with the same amount of time. Notwithstanding the time restriction, you’ll also be bored as out of your mind. Twice.
  2. The process is different from the new system vs the old system. When you implement a new system, processes will change. Keeping 2 separate processes using 2 different software systems will confuse the crap out of anyone.
  3. If anything is missed, which there always will be, reconciliation is a nightmare. Oh your number is off by $89.42? Good luck finding that.
  4. People will always work in an environment where they feel safe. Not because the old system is better, but because it’s familiar.

From my experience, when companies go parallel, they fail.

BURN THE SHIPS

In 1519, Captain Cortes told him men to “Burn the Ships” after he landed in North America. He knew that if his men (and himself probably) had a means to go back, they would not be committed on giving their all to survive in the new land.

The same thought can be applied to your ERP implementation. Telling your people that implementing a new ERP is important, but give them an option to do things the way they did before, they will always go back and do things they feel more comfortable.

Now you may be asking “but Alex, what if the new system doesn’t work?” The answer is simple, don’t go live until you’re ready. If your preparation is crap, you will fail anyway.

The next question you may be asking is “but Alex, what if we encounter problems with the new system?” There’s no instance where there are not problems when you go live. As long as you make proper preparation, the problems that arise should not be major. Any competent Dynamics 365 Business Central (AKA Dynamics NAV) partner or developer should be able to knock them out quickly.

Preparation

Before you burn the ship, it’s your job to ensure every business process can be, at the very least, replicated in the new system. This is part of your preparation before going live.

Having a smooth transition to a new ERP software can’t be completed with just thoughts and prayers, it needs meticulous testing, simulations, and feedbacks.

Be aware that it’s not going to be 100% smooth when you cut over to the new system. There will always be problems after go live. The important things are the major known kinks are resolved.

There shouldn’t be an instance where major problems that comes up when you turn on the switch, then someone seriously messed up.

Conclusion

Take the page out of Cortes’ playbook. Burn the Ships. Have your people focus all of their attention and resource into making the new software work in your organization.

Ways You Are Sabotaging Your ERP Implementation. Setting Unrealistic Live Dates

Setting Unrealistic Live Dates

Overview

Typically in an implementation, there will be a lot of moving parts. A lot of things has to go right for a successful implementation. If any of the key tasks don’t go right, no matter how small the task is, will cause havoc or delays for a company trying to go live.

I can assure you that every Dynamics 365 Business Central (aka Dynamics NAV) consultant/company will tell you that they’re an expert at Dynamics 365 Business Central / Dynamics NAV. Whether that’s true or not and how to detect if they’re full of hot air is probably a subject for another article.

Even if you have the most qualified and reliable NAV partner, projects may still go wrong because of the decisions made by the company that’s implementing the software.

I Want It Now

It’s unfortunate (or fortunate) that we live in a society where instant gratification is the norm. You want something? Order it on Amazon in the morning and get it delivered in the afternoon. These type of service puts a lot of burden on the supplier on making sure everything goes right.

When the owners of a company is often under pressure to make the necessary changes so they can meet the demands (realistic or not) of their customers, they often want to see the same turnaround time (realistic or not) from the projects they initiate.

Setting Unrealistic Live Dates

For some managers, the idea seem to be to set a high expectation for the project. Even if the project doesn’t get to the expectation, at least we’ll be better than the original expectations should be.

One of these types of decision is deciding on a live date. In an effort to make people place a sense of urgency on the implementation, management will set an unrealistic (or optimistic) go live date. The employees or consultants will often be too polite, shy, scared, etc to call out this decision.

As I mentioned earlier on this article, going live requires a lot of precise tasks to be completed, we can hurry those tasks or skip them. But shortcuts will often come back and haunt you. This is especially true in an ERP software implementation.

What always ends up happening is one of the following:

  1. The company goes live without being ready
  2. The live date gets postponed

Of the 2 scenarios that can happen, if #1 happens, the implementation will always lead to failure. From my personal experience, rescuing customers that went live before they’re ready never really recovers. We end up having to re-implement them to get the company back on track.

Hopefully, the management has the courage to decide on option #2 and call a stop and re-evaluate.

In either of those 2 cases, the damage would’ve already been done.

Culture of Expecting Failure

Usually, when a company misses their first go live date, they will miss their subsequent go-live dates as well.

Why? Because the people are already used to failure. Their consultants or the management has promised them that they’re going to go-live, you can almost hear the employees say “Yeah… Right…”.

When I walk into companies that has missed their go-live date a couple of time, it’s almost like walking into a vacuum of demotivation. When you even talk about going live again, you’re just met with an overload of cynicism and doubt.

Prevention

Set realistic live dates and stick to it. It’s your responsibility to call out BS if someone tries to talk crazy about a live date.

How we typically plan out a customer go-live is to pick a date the customer would like to go live, then work backwards to see if that’s feasible; considering holidays, vacations, buffer time, etc. If it’s not feasible, we tell them right away, even if we get scolded at.

Of you’re in charge of the implementation, be ready to say no to unrealistic requests to go live or hitting certain milestones; even in front of a team of management. Yes, they will question your expertise, your resources, your abilities, even your character.

Just remember hurting one person’s feeling is better than having the whole company suffer.

Why the Idle Client Timeout Won’t Work

Overview

Just a friendly reminder (or reminder for myself) that in order to get the Idle Client Time to work properly.

Make sure you change the Keep Alive Interval to something greater than Idle Client Timeout.

If you set the Idle Client Timeout to something LESS THAN Keep Alive Interval, the client will not disconnect automatically if they’re idle.

The Default

When you install Dynamics 365 Business Central (aka Dynamics NAV), this setting will be defaulted to 2 minutes. So if you want to kick people off if they’re idle for 5 minutes, make sure you remember to change this default setting.

Conclusion

Another one of those GOTCHA things when setting up the software…

Using Gmail Account with SMTP Setup with Dynamics Business Central / Dynamics NAV

Overview

Not all customers uses Office 365 as their e-mail. The other popular option companies use is G Suite from Google.

When you’re trying to setup the SMTP Mail using Gmail accounts in G Suite, you may encounter this error:

The mail system returned the following error: “Failure sending mail.
Unable to read data from the transport connection: net_io_connectionclosed.”.

Resolution

The problem is with how Google detects which application it deems as less secure. If you’re using an application it deems less secure, Google will refuse the connection.

What you’ll need to do is change your settings on Gmail.

On the Less Secure App access, you will need to turn this on.

Conclusion

Now when you go back to your Dynamics 365 Business Central (aka Dynamics NAV) application, you will be able to send the mail from the SMTP settings.

From 5 Months to 5 Minutes

Overview

Even though we’re at the age of the internet, a lot of companies still print hard copy catalogs.

If you work in any one of these organizations, you’ll know when it’s catalog season, it’s becomes a very stressful period in that the company has to put together all of their item attributes, pricing, description, pictures, etc in one “packet”.

This packet (along with your website) is your first impression to customers and prospects that may want to do business with you. Sometimes, your first impression is your only impression so companies will get it “right”.

Not only do you have to organize everything together, the information needs to be put together and shipped off for printing. The time constraints is furthered because a lot of US companies ship their catalog overseas so you will need to compile everything togehter even earlier.

The Problem

Here’s sample list of tasks for people creating catalogs:

  • Consolidating the item data
  • Figure out pricing
  • Consolidate the images
  • Make sure the right description is there
  • Figure out the Specifications
  • Get the right pagination
  • Categorize the items

Of course, this is only a partial list. To all you folks responsible for creating catalogs, I feel you bro.

To add on to the problem, in most cases, the description, spec, images, etc are never in a central location for the marketing/art department. Making the job more difficult.

Not only that, people have to deal with disjointed data. The catalog data is often not tied to the ERP/order entry system. So whoever is looking at the ERP/Order Entry system often will need their catalog next to them to flip through the actual page on what the customer is talking about.

So wouldn’t having all of the data in one central place be wonderful? Yes. Yes it would be.

Fed Up

So one of our clients, fed up with the amount of work they have to put into creating catalogs every year, decided to make a change. Of course we were tasked with finding or creating the right solution for them.

In addition, they have to create “mini catalogs” every month and every quarter.

The Challenge

As we looked for an add-on, but was most were too expensive and not scalable or customizable. They are not too thrilled on having to rely on a proprietary software. In addition, they needed to pay an annual enhancement for a product that didn’t do everything they wanted.

So having add-on or a separate piece of software for catalog was out of the question.

Putting everything in a central place like Business Central (Dynamics NAV) makes a lot of sense. However, even if you have all of the data in Business Central (NAV) there’s another problem. RDLC.

Let’s face it, RDLC is a disaster. Despite multiple complaints from partners and multiple releases, RDLC is still absolute trash. You will still run into memory issues, it’s still slow as hell, it’s still tough to make changes.

To print >5,000 page catalog with images and data from all over the place in one go? Har Har…

So having add-on or a separate piece of software for catalog was out of the question. Putting everything in a central place like Business Central (AKA Dynamics NAV) is good, but RDLC is trash. What to do?

Figure It Out

First we needed to create an infrasture to house their item categories and the text descriptions of the catalog. That part of it was straightforward since we know Business Central (Dynamics NAV).

The next challenge was to actually print the thing out. RDLC simply didn’t work. Period.

It couldn’t handle the number of records that we’re going to pass to it, and it couldn’t handle the images we’re going to send to it.

Any developer that has worked with RDLC will tell you that trying to make a RDLC look good on a form type report will require a sacrifice of your first born on a specific day to the software Gods. Not to mention the margins and the page breaks…

The Solution

Our prayers seems to be answered with a simple tool from a company in Europe. ForNAV.

Note that I’m not getting paid to promote their product, infact, I’m paying them to use their product…

Not only was it easy to create the catalog, it could handle everything we threw at it.

Here’s the result printing from with in NAV:

The customer was extactic! This effectively cut their time to put together the catalog from 5 months to 5 minutes!

This is what they created for their catalog using NAV:

Not just printing catalog, this allows the customer to utilize the same report to print their weekly and monthly promotional catalogs at a fraction of the time.

Conclusion

The whole concept of ERP is to save you time and make processes more efficient.

Somehow, in the pursuit of integrating different silos of software togther, large software companies are losing sight of one simple goal why people use software in the first place; to make our lives easier.

I do miss those days where we can have one software with one interface where we can do what we needed to do and go home… But the industry and the customers wants to go where they want to go.

By the way, I’m still waiting for MSFT to trash RDLC.

Changing Protection Level to Boost Performance

Overview

Just a quick note about boosting the client performance for full Windows or RTC clients for customers using Dynamics 365 Business Central (aka Dynamics NAV).

This was brought to us by one of our customers that is looking for ways to reduce the lag for their users using the full Windows client.

One of the newer features in Dynamics 365 Business Central (aka Dynamics NAV) is to allow different connections to the data within NAV. This means security is a big issue since you do not want random programs to connect to your financial data.

Changing Protection Level

When you set the Protection Level as the default (EncryptAndSign), every data packet being sent and received are encrypted and authenticated to ensure you are who you are.

This means that when the users are viewing, for example, the customer card, if you disable their user on the Active Directory, they will get kicked out immediately. Yes, even if they’re not sending and receiving any data.

This may cause additional traffic to your data packets being sent and received as it requires additional layers of encryption and signing to ensure the data is legitimate as it ensure the person accessing the data is legitiment.

For users using NAV locally within the company where the server is hosted locally, these kind of security may not be needed.

For our client that’s running Dynamics NAV on-premise, changing Protection Level to None has significantly boosted the Windows client for the end users.

IMPORTANT NOTE!

You should only change this for users that are using NAV locally and are using Windows Login.

Your security is important and you should definitely consult your local security expert before changing this.

Proceed at your own risk!!

Addressing Inefficient Business Processes

Overview

Addressing inefficiencies in any company is a crap shoot.

Often times, the management of a company will have a discussion with us to discuss their challenges. The conversation in these meeting usually leads to how can they address their “mess”. For example, their inventory quantities are always wrong.

It’s not like the managers have nothing better to do than to discuss these issues with consultants. These types discussion are usually forced on their company because their business environment is changing.

Their competitors are offering things like same day delivery, integrated e-commerce, real-time shipping notifications, inventory availability, customer self-service, etc. All in an effort to entice their customers away from them. These managers feel like they have to do something or they will be left behind.

The Lie

Most companies believe (or are sold) that if they upgrade or move to a new ERP or CRM software, their efficiency problems will magically go away (it’s a lie).

The analogy I like to use is visiting someone’s home. If the person is messy, the house will be a mess. It doesn’t matter whether they live in a small apartment or a large mansion.

The common belief is that if they live in a house that’s a mess, if they move into a larger home, it’ll be magically be not-messy. Unfortunately, that’s never the case. If you live in a small apartment and it’s a mess, moving to a larger space, it will still be a mess; but in a larger space.

The Cost

The technology portion is always where misunderstanding occurs. One of the justifications for a company that stays with inefficient processes are because they thought those type of systems are only for large companies. They do not have the budget for these expensive and complicated systems.

For example, one of the common problems that plagues every company is inventory. To resolve negative inventory in their system, the topic about using wireless scanners will come up.

The goal is the warehouse employees can be on top of inventory quantities and report discrepancies immediately as they see fit. The common rebuke will typically be “that’s for bigger companies, not a small company like us”. In reality, it’s not… It’s really not just for big businesses.

Back in the 90s and the early 2000’s, the technologies used by larger corporation had a high price tag. This means if you’re not a large corporation, you wouldn’t be able to enjoy a full ERP software without spending a chunk of your money.

For a large company with deep pockets, they can withstand these expenses, even if it doesn’t work out well. For a smaller or medium sized company, that may be a big risk.

Now, the functionalities enjoyed by large corporation are pretty well replicated for the small and the mid-market. This means you can be a micro-business and can still use the same functionality that large corporations uses.

In fact, the functionalities difference offered to large corporations and small companies are getting more narrow with every release. Case in point, Dynamics 365. You can be a 5 user company or a 500 user corporation, they can all use Dynamics 365. They can all use warehouse/shipping automation tools, they can all use dashboards, they can all integrate e-commerce to their system.

The Real Cost

The real cost of addressing the mess is the management of the company.

Of course, me being the terrible salesperson, pointing this out to them usually gets me in all sorts of troubles… But I digress…

In our example, if there is not a culture or process in place to have accurate inventory, then it’s not a priority. Doesn’t matter what system is in place, in the inventory will be a mess.

Just by implementing a warehouse system in place will not magically make your inventory accurate. It requires people to be on top of recording their work using scanners.

If there’s a culture of “I’ll just move this item here and record it later cause, you know, we’re busy”, your warehouse management system will ultimately fail.

That’s the funny thing about technology and automation is that if your process is efficient, it will make you a lot more efficient. But if you’re process is not efficient, technology and automation will make your operation a lot more inefficient, faster.

Conclusion

In the end, technology will only faciliate your existing process. What I always recommend people to do is to get their house in order before they consider automating it.

Don’t get me wrong, switching new systems is a perfect time to reorganize your process, but if you’re not fully onboard and get the key player’s buy in, it will turn into a nightmare really quickly.