The ERPodcast

It's not another Top Ten ERP list, not a Top Five, not a shootout or comparison, but the Best ERP for Your Business.

Not another ERP ranking list, but how to get THE BEST ERP ever!

E31 SuiteWorld 2023

Timestamp

Subject

5:36

Sponsored by Acura MDX

15:45

Apple Never Introduced a Category Killer

20:15

NetSuite Keynote Coverage

22:43

The Hype that is AI

26:01:00

Suite Up

31:30:00

NetSuite New Releases

35:08:00

AI Becomes Real

38:00:00

Peak Outliers in ERP Marketing

42:00:00

Importance of ERP Development

Links of note

Keynote SuiteWorld 2023 Evan Goldberg, CEO

Details on New NetSuite offerings, Gary Wiessinger's Keynote

Global Smartphone Market Share

PFE Open/PFE MFX up and Under

October 2023. NetSuite is hosting SuiteWorld, the annual gathering of users, partners, developers, consultants, and anyone else affiliated with the NetSuite universe.

It’s been a busy year in ERP in general, NetSuite in particular. There are now over 37,000 companies running on NetSuite – phenomenal growth. Around 2019? They had just broken the 18,000 companies on NetSuite mark – so the user community has doubled in 4 years, or 3 years plus a Covid timeout.

Anyway – SuiteWorld attendance is critically important for top performing NetSuite-using Companies. Even more important for companies not yet using NetSuite.

Why is that you ask? Why would you go to a users conference if you’re not a user. Here’s the story. New to ERP, clients are looking at ERP, considering which ones to select. User conferences in general are a great idea. I mean, everyone wants references – demos are really great, but not great reality. You want to see real-life examples. Well, there’s about 3,000 users at NetSuite you could talk to.

Does NetSuite really work as advertised? You’re going to see lots of companies, who, at one time were exactly where you are. How does this work? And the answer is two-fold – it doesn’t work like you think it would, and two, if you follow the process, just like these 3,000 folks did, you too will get there.

Is it worth it? The majority of the folks at SuiteWorld will tell you they wished they’d started sooner. The rest got into NetSuite as a startup – mostly because they’d used it at a former employer already.

Another critical thing we’ve learned from past clients. About a third of ERP failures can be attributed to implementation fatigue – and we’re talking the entire system up and running but features they expected and wanted, well, doesn’t really work.  Truth is, It gets hard at the very end of an implementation and it’s been a long haul to get there, and the internal team often quits at the 5 yard line – says something like ‘well, the software really doesn’t work like it did in the demos’. When the issue is, yes, it does work, but not the way YOU’RE trying to do it. So having the opportunity to actually see the intended functionality working for other companies – your internal team will realize that yes, we can do this if they did it – there is a way. And they take the ball from the 5 and push it over the goal line.

If you’re already running NetSuite, then it’s even more important to get to SuiteWorld.

You’ll find out first-hand all about the new developments being released this year. Even get a chance to see demonstrations and some hands-on labs working with new features.

Plus there’s the best-in-class Presentations. Other companies who use NetSuite, who have seen tremendous results, telling you exactly how they did it. You can ask them questions, take notes, get handouts, follow up with the product leaders from NetSuite – why they designed it that way, how it works best.

Then there’s everything else. All the affiliated software products, apps, programs, platforms, portals – everything that works with and around NetSuite. Might not be something you’re doing this year, but you learn about it and next year, when Management tells you your department needs to...

E30 CFO Leadership Conference West 2023

 E30 CFO Leadership Conference West 2023

ERPodcast Episode 30.2

Intro MFX

This week in ERP….(or at least my week in ERP)

Hey Folks – Gene Hammons, Director of ProfitFromERP with Episode 30 of the ERPodcast…

Interesting week however you look at it - locally, here in AZ, Tempe to be specific, the CFO Leadership Council held CFO Leadership Conference West 2023 - thanks to my friends at Oracle NetSuite and Avalera (the tax guys) they were able to sneak me into the Networking Event held poolside at one of the local mountainside Marriott Resorts. And fortunately, fall came to the desert three days prior to the event and it was a great evening under the stars. A week earlier and it would have been 103 degrees with the smell of roasted CFO’s wafting across the desert.

Got to talk to a lot of different CFO’s from lots of different companies all across the country. I’d say attendance was in the 200-400 range, but that’s a guess on my part. A lot of the sessions were on technology for finance, using automation in driving better data and how data driven organizations had clearer and faster reads on how their specific company was performing in a wildly fluctuating market. It goes without saying that we’re dealing with challenging market conditions these days. Makes me wonder if it goes without saying, why do I keep saying it.

We’re beginning to see real functionality with AI in finance software – more on that next week – Many CFO’s report their staff spending more time on accuracy than analysis, and the focus here was using automation to drive the accuracy, AI to report anomalies and staff can concentrate on analysis to provide real service to the rest of the organization.

Many of the CFO’s were with companies already using NetSuite - and the new numbers are out, NetSuite is now over 37,000 companies using the Suite. I remember 2019, not that long ago, when they were ecstatic at breaking the 18,000 companies mark. The conventional wisdom at the time was NetSuite had seen 30% growth year after year but driving 30% increases of a 10k customer base is a lot easier to achieve than pulling off 30% growth on a base of 18,000 customers - so surely there was a ceiling coming soon. Execpt it didn’t….and here’s a few reasons why

The Oracle Boost – I don’t know if you know the NetSuite history, initially, Larry Ellison Oracle Founder and CEO, provided once Oracle employee now NetSuite Founder CEO Evan Goldberg with initial funding to start a cloud based business software – so Larry owned a good deal of the stock in NetSuite. Oracle, for reasons we’ll cover other places, wasn’t a big player in cloud technology, but as NetSuite grew, Oracle could shortcut it’s way into cloud technology by acquiring NetSuite – which turned out to be really great in many areas.

Going Global

2019 I also was at a NetSuite Suite Success Training in Denver . We heard that Oracle, was driving huge development dollars into the NetSuite platform.  I first saw NetSuite really take off in our customer base around 2014, back then, NetSuite was a US market product.

As I met my fellow Suite Success team members in Denver, I met other students from Japan, Indonesia, Australia, Ireland, London, Paris, Germany, Thailand-I think, India, Sri Lanka - and that’s the ones I remember. That kind of illustrated the global impact NetSuite was starting to have in foreign ERP providers and global markets with Oracle-backed development rolling out NetSuite versions specific to other countries, localized to tax and legal issues of those particular markets - that was part of the new development Oracle was providing - driving new markets globally, so NetSuite could replicate the tremendous success they’ve had stateside and start serving a worldwide market. And that’s just some of the huge expansion of NetSuite capabilities and functionalites

Actually that turned out to be pretty fortuitous on my part The ERPodcast,

ERPodcast Episode 29

The Perfect Time for ERP

MFX/Intro

Welcome to the ERPodcast Episode #29 – The Perfect Time for ERP – that’s the title and theme of today’s examination of just that - when should a growing company undertake an ERP project?

And it’s not a simple question. Any ERP project is massive, whether you’re a $12m annual revenue company going from Quickbooks to Sage Intacct or a $200m company replacing DynamicsGP with a new cloud-based ERP.

ERP is an intensive project, needs a ‘all hands on deck’ approach and the stakes are high. There’s legendary stories of Hershey’s Chocolate almost losing the company when a failed SAP effort meant they couldn’t ship product in the middle of the peak Halloween to Christmas season – not good – and there’s also scores of those types of stories from lesser known and more private companies.

So when is, The Perfect Time for ERP?

We’ll talk about 3 real world examples of recent ProfitFromERP clients and the drivers behind those examples.

There’s also a world of opinion in the world of startups – do you do the ERP project Pre-IPO to show potential investors solid financial controls and operational efficiency? Do you wait until the next round of funding to be able to afford the higher end ERP’s with related SEC reporting tools to make sure of compliance needed by a public company?

Then there’s the staffing balance – we’ll have more people on board next year so we can spread the ERP implementation workload across more resources….but if we had ERP already installed we’d need to hire fewer people for the same size operation.

Here’s the conundrum – most of us don’t hire for excess capacity. It’s more like we’re not really sure of the data, it’s coming from disparate spreadsheets, running late, last minute– but the staff is working overtime and Saturdays – if we just had one more person to chase down the data… which is a good solution, but by definition, a growing company continues to grow and we keep adding one more person just to keep up, pretty soon there’s 22 desks in the business office and we’re looking for more space because everyone’s working overtime and Saturdays.

Putting things off til some magical ‘some day’ only gets us from complexity to mass complexity.

Then one day we wake up and we realize ‘WOW - it would have been a lot easier to implement ERP when the business was simpler and we could have managed growth in a lot more systematic method’. Plus, instead of rolling out training to 50 people all at once, we comprehensively train the first 10 and teach each onboarding employee the exact steps using the new software specifically for their job duties. And maybe even start hiring people who’ve already been using the same ERP we just implemented.

So what’s The Perfect Time for ERP?  Let’s look at some real-world examples. Stories of companies that took a leap at different stages and how that all turned out. I’m your host, Gene Hammons, Director of ProfitFromERP,  our business consulting firm helping clients actually create Profit, From their ERP projects. Right back after this!

Stinger out.

Hey – a word about sponsors. Putting together the ERPodcast is a labor of love, it’s often our first introduction to new clients, we also think it’s about giving back to the community, sharing stories of real world ERP projects, how the market works, things we’ve experienced over the years and so on. .

As long as there are still ERP projects that fail or have huge cost overruns or don’t do what the demo looked like it did – as long as there’s a bad project out there, we’ll keep pushing out the know-how to avoid those situations

But – running a growing company ProfitFromERP – just like any other emerging company, there’s a lot to do. Time is critical.

And if we’re going to allocate the time to the ERPodcast – well, we need to do it as more than a net loss leader – so we have sponsors.

The easiest way to get podcast sponsors for a podcast is through placement brokers – you can te...

It's Crazy Out There!

We can't control the outside world, but as Uncertainty reigns externally, Business Equilibrium results when we create better data certainty within our businesses. See how other leading companies have managed the raging seas of uncertainty in the boat of Cloud ERP 

ERPodcast - Ranked #3 in Top 15 ERP Podcasts!

 

Recently - Feedspot.com a digital content aggregator assymbled a Top 15 ERP podcasts list - and the ERPodcast came in at #3 - Unfortunately, we dropped in the recent rankings and today's episode contains the original recording we posted on LinkedIn when the original rankings came out - apologies for any confusion!

About today's ERPodcast

MIsaligned incentives - budget shortfalls - tight implementation timelines - How do you conquer the most common pitfalls leading to a failed ERP implementation? The ProfitFromERP methodology bakes in best practices so you end up watching company goals and, like we say, ProfitFromERP, our clients make ERP PAY!

E28c ERPodcast - Certainty in an Uncertain World

 

MFX up and under (but louder than last time)

 

 

It’s the ERPodcast Episode 28 – The official podcast of ProfitFromERP.com and I’m the Director, Gene Hammons, Over the past 18 months, we’ve helped about a dozen companies get through challenges we never thought any of us would face.

 

If you’ve listened to earlier ERPodcast Episodes, you know what a huge advantage digital companies had dealing with a world gone virtual.

The #1 Issue? Uncertainty. The country, the workforce, supply chains, inflation, is covid up or down? Opening up or locking down?

- - There’s a world of uncertainty out there  - - - if we’re going to maintain the right business equilibrium we need to create more certainty within the four walls of our businesses.  We can’t control outside uncertainties but we can surely affect the internal workings That’s Our ability to respond. That’s response – ability – and here’s how some of our clients define business responsibility today.

 

One big uncertainty is in today’s workforce. How do we deal with the changes, what are the technology issues that can even stop top talent from joining your firm? So let’s talk about how can technology help us get more done with the fewer people we actually do have on staff

We’ll examine that.

 

Supply Chain issues? Overseas shipments are bringing back the old phrase Slow Boat from China – which many of you didn’t even know was a phrase – tech can’t help get your boat unloaded. But we can use demand planning to anticipate shortages long before your ship is just offshore with the parts, raw materials and goods your customers are already waiting for – never mind the trucking

 

 

Creating certainty in an uncertain world comes down to the Information in Information Technology – just in case you forgot what IT stood for.  Is your information good enough, timely enough, informative enough? You may be running a traditional ERP system that wasn’t ever giving you the reports you need. Or you may have a great baseline ERP but operationally, there’s no accurate way to gather data. Or FP&A modeling – can you project your profit margins when gas goes to $5 a gallon? Sometimes it’s modular additions to your technology stack – Sometimes it’s a complete Digital Transformation – a total software overhaul of your company.

 

Here’s what real world ProfitFromERP clients are doing to create certainty for savvy CFO’s and operational teams.

 

Item One – having a hard time finding enough people?  Maybe your old technology is keeping today’s workforce away  - - Item Two It’s th...

Digital Transformation

What don't you know about ERP? Industry secrets, mis-aligned incentives and drivers of behavior all impact your final result - Today's ERPodcast let's you get a handle on some of the largest pitfalls threatening your project before you start. 

LinkSources

 

ERPodcast E27

CEO/CFO Report 2021 Links

 

Links mentioned in today’s Episode 26 of the ERPodcast

SaaS Success Series - an online seminar series brought to you by Sage Intacct. Register for this week's sessions and find links to previous panel appearances by Gene Hammons Here

ERPodcast Episode 24 and Episode 25 Is a case study on one company, Nice Link Home Furnishings, who implemented the Cloud ERP Acumatica in the middle of the pandemic – here’s the link to the ERPodcast ERP News Page.

 

About today's ERPodcast

MIsaligned incentives - budget shortfalls - tight implementation timelines - How do you conquer the most common pitfalls leading to a failed ERP implementation? The ProfitFromERP methodology bakes in best practices so you end up watching company goals exceeded and, like we say, ProfitFromERP, our clients make ERP PAY!

 

E27 – What They Don’t Tell You About ERP

(but you soon find out anyway)

 

MFX up and under

 

It’s Episode 27 of the ERPodcast, What They Don’t Tell You About ERP (but you’ll soon find out anyway).  I’m your host, Gene Hammons the Director of ProfitFromERP - a business consultancy revolving around software, it’s uses and misuses – and as we like to say, Our Clients Make ERP Pay – pay for itself, pay off, pay back, break even and we even have the cash flow analysis to prove it.

But all that aside. What’s this about what they don’t tell you about ERP? Who are they? And Why are they so hush-mouthed about important ERP situations?  We’ll get to that in today’s episode, what they don’t tell you, but more importantly, what’s their motivation, what’s their incentive and how are we going to shift incentives both for the software vendor, but also shift incentives for your internal team - all so that your company comes out on top in your next ERP project.

 

But here’s the Number One Thing they don’t tell you – most ERP projects fail. Some are small fails, like, the software wasn’t live on time. Some are big fails like, we went over budget. By double. And some are epic fails, like, this doesn’t really do what we saw in the demo. But we’re stuck. And some fails are Ed’s fault. Ed ran the selection committee that got us into this mess in the first place – he’s not here anymore so we pretty much blame it on Ed-ware instead of software. So today we’ll even tell you how to keep your job if someone walks into your office and says, “We need a new ERP system and we want you to run the project…say, your middle name isn’t Ed is it”? – all that and more – right after this word from our sponsor – It’s Episode 27 of the ERPodcast What they don’t tell you about ERP.

 

(break)

 

 

 

 

 

Endorsement – SaaS Success Series

Sage Intacct

 

Much has changed in the Business world over the last year - - don’t need to tell you that. While we don’t  gather in large groups, conventions, presentations, business meetings – have moved online and I have to say the webinar content has improved dramatically.

I know for myself,  instead of my normal speeches at various conventions, I’ve avoiding airlines, hotels, overserved networking parties and have still appeared on a few panel discussions over months past – most recently, the SaaS Success Series by Sage Intacct – which is still ongoing the week we release this podcast -  but even better...

Digital Transformation

2020 saw companies who's approach to digital transformation allowed them to quickly pivot - oftentimes capturing entire markets before the competition could respond. 2021 shows an increased demand for new market technologies - we talk about who did it and how you can too.

LinkSources

 

ERPodcast E26

CEO/CFO Report 2021 Links

 

Links mentioned in today’s Episode 26 of the ERPodcast

 

ERPodcast Episode 24 and Episode 25 Is a case study on one company, Nice Link Home Furnishings, who implemented the Cloud ERP Acumatica in the middle of the pandemic – here’s the link to the ERPodcast ERP News Page.

 

Arizona Coyotes NHL Hockey

 

In the Wall Street Journal’s recent 2020 Review, journalist Tom Vanderbilt cites his new book, You’re Never Too Old to Become a Beginner. 

Fender Play

The Software Eats World blog of Andressen Horowitz. In a recent article The CFO in Crisis Mode: Modern Times Call for New Tools 

2014 Blogpost from GeneHammons.com – genesis of the Component ERP Strategy 

SAP Stock Valuation loses 30B EU in Single Day From Computing

The Digital Transformation Series of ERPodcasts here. 

Here We source several articles from trade papers

Controllers Council notes the trend of technological innovation in the Finance office Link.

CFODive reports there’s a trend towards a return to Zero Based Budgeting –Link.

Auditoria CFO Corner – recorded 5 minute Zoom videos featuring leading CFO’s

 

Item Next – Digital is OK for those guys, but won’t work for me.

Book a hair appointment

Play Golf

Keep Score with Hole 19

Track your Road Bike Mileage with Strava

Controllers Council talks about innovation in the Financial Office

 

Again the Wall Street Journal reports covid spawned business changes that would have taken years unfolded in months – it brought 2030 to 2020. Link.

 

Final example, Here comes Forbes with an article on Copart –Link.

About today's ERPodcast

The uncertainty when Covid hit in the spring of 2019 resulted in a year's long effort to find out how clients could react and survive. Studying the market winners, it was determined that many sectors were beginning to thrive almost immediately after the lockdown.  Was it because they were well ahead in technology and used cloud based software to quickly pivot to new market opportunities? Or was it the most forward thinking companies tend to be more adventuresome in their approach to new technologies? The fact is, more and more companies are utilizing technology for competitive advantage and those clients naturally gravitate to firms like ProfitFromERP. Here's how 2020 advances can help your company do the same.

ERPodcast E26

CEO/CFO Report 2021 Cloud

Episode 26 of the ERPodcast –

MFX Up and Under

It’s the CEO/CFO Report 2021 - on the Top 10 Top 10 Lists for 2021.  Two things – one, as you may know, when we do a CEO/CFO Report we topload the info – listen to the first 90 seconds of the podcast and you’ll be exposed to all content – with the detail to follow. Also, as a busy C-level exec, you can find links on the ProfitFromERP website to learn more. And secondly, saving you even more time, every year end and the start of every new year, you get lists - Top 10 things that happened, Top 10 Trends for the new year…– so we’ve waded through all of the year end/year start lists and pulled out the best when it comes to business, business software, business efficiency, business productivity – we read through it all so you don’t have to - the best information when it comes to ProfitFromERP.

Acumatica, The Cloud ERP 

Cloud ERP creates incredible opportunities for integration - with internal apps but more importantly with outside vendors and customers - Through EDI and digital connection, Nice Link was able to open sales channels with Wayfair, Costco, Overstock.com, Macy's and many others - Find out how interconnected sales channels can work for you.

Net at Work is not only an Acumatica reseller,  but with experience in multi-channel distribution, warehousing, and the accounting behind it all, it's more than simply implementing software - it's implementing best practices, lean staffing functionality and cost effective operational integration, with the end result, Nice Link Business Performance - Unleashed!

About today's ERPodcast

As Covid hit the US in February, Nice Link, a furniture distributor saw order cancellations flood into the business office. Jay Carlson, President of Nice Link had projects underway to upgrade the backend software of his US based business. Quickbooks couldn’t handle the inventory, warehouses or manage the volume of digital sales orders Nice Link was anticipating. Yet, despite the uncertainty they pressed on. Acumatica, the Cloud ERP was well underway being implemented and would go live in June. Simultaneously, as the American workforce shifted from office based to home based, online furniture sales exploded. Today, we see the success that was Nice Link’s forward-thinking strategy and Acumatica’s tactical application – creating connections with retail furniture outlets, smoothing the bumps in eCommerce and handling a workload that would have necessitated an expensive staffing upsurge to manage in a manual business software setting. It’s a story of enduring Entrepreneurship. It’s a story of cloud ERP functionality. It’s a story of Net at Work’s distribution experience. It’s an American Success Story of Profit From ERP – this week on the ERPodcast

E25 – Nice Link Part Two

Jay Carlson

 

Believe it or not, it’s Episode 25 of the ERPodcast

 

MFX up and under

 

Today’s episode is Part Two of our conversation with Jay Carlson, President of Nice Link Home Furnishings – if you caught Episode 24 you’ll remember Nice Link implemented and launched Acumatica, the Cloud ERP in June, right in the middle of a certain pandemic you may have heard something about – and as is with all ERP, especially critical during times of market disruption, Nice Link automated, so they didn’t need so much labor and so many spreadsheets. The connected digitally with their customers, so they’re taking sales orders that someone else is paying to input instead of hiring more folks internally. They got control over 7 national warehouses with a pretty complex sales model. They expanded eCommerce, with items appearing on other eTailers websites opening new channels and new market shares.

Did all this just happen by ERP magic, No – it’s hard work and you need help from implementation partners such as Nice Link’s go-to, a firm called Net At Work – who if you know ERP you’ve heard of Net At Work over the years as a leading ERP implementation partner – of course ERP is something most companies pay attention to once or maybe twice every decade – but take my word for it, Net At Work is a major player – Jay will speak about them on today’s Episode.

Nice Link Home Furnishings was at the right place at the right time when home furnishings kind of took off.

Acumatica, The Cloud ERP 

Cloud ERP creates incredible opportunities for integration - with internal apps but more importantly with outside vendors and customers - Through EDI and digital connection, Nice Link was able to open sales channels with Wayfair, Costco, Overstock.com, Macy's and many others - Find out how interconnected sales channels can work for you.

Net at Work is not only an Acumatica reseller,  but with experience in multi-channel distribution, warehousing, and the accounting behind it all, it's more than simply implementing software - it's implementing best practices, lean staffing functionality and cost effective operational integration, with the end result, Nice Link Business Performance - Unleashed!

About today's ERPodcast

As Covid hit the US in February, Nice Link, a furniture distributor saw order cancellations flood into the business office. Jay Carlson, President of Nice Link had projects underway to upgrade the backend software of his US based business. Quickbooks couldn’t handle the inventory, warehouses or manage the volume of digital sales orders Nice Link was anticipating. Yet, despite the uncertainty they pressed on. Acumatica, the Cloud ERP was well underway being implemented and would go live in June. Simultaneously, as the American workforce shifted from office based to home based, online furniture sales exploded. Today, we see the success that was Nice Link’s forward-thinking strategy and Acumatica’s tactical application – creating connections with retail furniture outlets, smoothing the bumps in eCommerce and handling a workload that would have necessitated an expensive staffing upsurge to manage in a manual business software setting. It’s a story of enduring Entrepreneurship. It’s a story of cloud ERP functionality. It’s a story of Net at Work’s distribution experience. It’s an American Success Story of Profit From ERP – this week on the ERPodcast

E24 – Nice Link Jay Calrson

MFX up and under

lEpisode 24 of the ERPodcast – Nice Link Home Furnishings – a distribution story of Digital Transformation in the Age of Covid… if you’ve been listening to the ERPodcast for any time, we’ve been telling stories of how resilient companies are using cloud software and digital transformation to survive, and in some cases even thrive in the covidian economy – this week, It’s Jay Carlson, President of Nice Link talking about how their business turned to Acumatica, the Cloud ERP, as well as Acumatica Partner Net At Work, - - - initially to save money - - as Jay will put it, ‘he couldn’t keep throwing labor and spreadsheets at the problem’. Later Nice Link would find entire new lines of business made possible by simple digital integrations – so it’s a real life story of taking on an ERP project at the height of covid, and having the project succeed wildly – allowing Nice Link to actually Profit From ERP – see how I slipped that one in there. This podcast is not wild claims of how ERP is an end all - but how a growing company can use ERP to better connect, to extend sales options, to process orders electronically – and go from QuickBooks and spreadsheet inventory to 7 shared warehouses nationwide with complex cross selling all integrated into the system. Then getting closer to their customers with electronic integration into Wayfair, Costco, Macy’s and others – and how when the pandemic had everyone working from home,