Episode 416: Adventures ERP Business Central Style

Buckle up for a lively chat that’s equal parts heart and hustle! This episode of Dynamics Corner finds our hosts Kris and Brad diving into the wild world of ERP implementation with Ryan Pollyniak, who explains how to juggle family life while steering massive tech projects. We’re talking about Microsoft Dynamics, change management, and the art of keeping everyone from stressed-out employees to top executives on the same page. From why your users need to be in the loop from day one to the magic of clear communication (hint: it starts at the top!), Ryan breaks down the must-haves for nailing an ERP rollout. Expect practical gems like why budgeting isn’t just number-crunching, how user acceptance testing saves the day, and the power of long-term planning to avoid project chaos. Whether you’re a tech nerd, a family-first pro, or just curious about making changes stick, this episode’s got you covered with real talk, relatable stories, and a few laughs.

Chapters

• 0:48 Episode Introduction and The Frog Story
• 6:46 Ryan Polniak's Background as an ERP Sherpa
• 11:20 Starting the ERP Journey With Vision
• 18:14 Managing Change and Communication
• 28:27 Allocating Time and Resources
• 40:43 Planning for Implementation Timeline and Budget
• 59:47 Measuring ERP Success and User Adoption
• 1:07:37 Closing Thoughts and Contact Information

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

The frog. Every time I go to my door it always falls on my head and I've moved him several times. That's, I'm serious. He lives at the top of the door, the screen door.

Speaker 2: 0:12

Just turn into a pet Listen.

Speaker 1: 0:14

Feed all your bugs in it. Every time I go outside he jumps on me. Well, not every time, almost every time. And so this morning, and listen, I've relocated him, like nicely picked him up, moved him to the other side of the fence, into the woods, thinking, oh, maybe you'll stay there.

Speaker 2: 0:30

Nope, comes back, just give him. He's probably eating your bugs. If you catch bugs, just feed it.

Speaker 1: 0:37

He jumps on me. That's the point. I went through the door this morning and he jumped on my shoulder Yesterday. Jumped on me oh shit.

Speaker 2: 0:45

At least it's not like a tarantula or a spider dude. Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics Corner. How do you build an ERP? Just like building a deck. I'm your co-host, chris.

Speaker 1: 0:58

And this is Brad. This episode was recorded on March 20th 2025. Chris, chris, chris, how do you build a house, how do you build a deck, how do you prepare for an ERP implementation? And you have to listen to the entire episode because there were four quotes that I now put down on my list of quotes, as we recorded this episode With us today, we had the opportunity to speak with Ryan Polniak. Good morning, sir, good morning guys, how are you?

Speaker 1: 1:33

Excellent, excellent. I haven't had the chance to talk with you in a while, but I see you doing some great things.

Speaker 3: 1:38

I don't know about that. I don't know who told you that, Brad, but I do stay busy, I know you guys are doing great things.

Speaker 1: 1:46

The podcast has taken off oh great, thank you well it's all because of individuals such as yourself who take the time to speak with us we're the boring guys it's, it's the individuals that we speak with that have a vast wealth of information to share and experiences, which makes it nice yeah well, pleasure to be here, guys, and we appreciate that. I've always looked forward to speaking with you. I get closer and closer to you every time we still have to get a hike in.

Speaker 3: 2:13

Yeah, I know, and you know you have to turn words into action at some point. Right, and for me, free time is such a premium with three little girls. They're all in gymnastics. We do that, you know, every day, but Wednesday, during the week, and right now, every weekend, is a meet.

Speaker 3: 2:32

That's it, you know busy job in the ERP business and and and between that and the gymnastics. That is what I do and I I'm not complaining, by the way, I do love it. I love hiking too, and you got to make some time for that kind of thing and I will uh, I will get up there and go for a hike up there in the, in the white mountains, with you at some point absolutely.

Speaker 1: 2:52

I like the turning words into actions. Quote I'm going to steal that I think that our time.

Speaker 1: 2:58

Everybody says that they don't have time. They don't have time, which is true, and everyone has busy schedules. It's a matter of what you do with your time and I'm happy to see that you're doing it with your little girls in gymnastics, because I'll tell everyone when your children get older all that complaining that you're doing about the meets on the weekends or the soccer tournaments, lacrosse tournaments or whatever you have. You miss it. That's right. You know you go through it and you're like, ah, you know it's a struggle, but you actually miss seeing it. And now I appreciate being able to see others in those tournaments and those meets and I miss it and I I appreciate seeing the kids having fun and doing things. So I hope your girls are doing well with it.

Speaker 3: 3:35

Yeah, absolutely, and you know, don't interpret it as a complaint. I do love it. I've got the vanity plate coming, which is a surprise. I checked availability. Gym dad is available in georgia right now in my county. I've got like two months until my tag renewal comes, so I check it every couple days. It's still there. Um, I love it, brad. I mean no question about it you only get to do this for a while, right?

Speaker 3: 3:58

yeah, short time hiking is passion of mine. I I love it, love hanging out with you. We're going to make that happen and you know I do believe big time in. You are what you do, not what you say. That was a quote that a guy from my past that I used to know in the business world gave to me and said look, say whatever you want, I am going to. I was going to, I meant to, I plan on. None of that really matters. You are what you do at the end of the day, not what you say that's two quotes I'm stealing from you.

Speaker 1: 4:32

There you go. No, that is so true. You are what you do. Words mean. Uh, you know, words means just that they're words, it's, it's your actions and what you do to stand up. This is all philosophical. Do you get on the uh balance beam yourself with the girls do? Do you get out there and do the balance beam? Oh, wait a minute.

Speaker 3: 4:47

We do have one down here, so I thought maybe it was in the background. No, not really. Anyway, I mean, I've walked across the thing a few times, which I consider a win at this stage, and they're doing cartwheels on it and turns and this, you know, that's impressive, I do not know how individuals that participate in gymnastics do some of the stuff they do.

Speaker 1: 5:08

I'm with you, Ryan. I think I would just take a win as just being able to get up on a balance beam and stand for a few minutes, nevermind walking or doing some of the flips and the bounces. I just when you see one, like on TV, it looks like it's, you know, maybe three feet wide and you know, and you could put a party up there, but when you see them in real life they're only a few inches wide, right Four.

Speaker 3: 5:32

Regulation is four inches right my foot's not even four inches.

Speaker 1: 5:36

I mean my foot's larger than four inches.

Speaker 3: 5:37

So imagine doing a back handspring right where you're literally launching yourself backwards and landing on your hands on a four-inch-wide balance beam. I mean it's incredible, that's impressive.

Speaker 1: 5:51

I cannot do it. I'm very happy that you get to do that with your girls. It must be amazing to watch, and hopefully they can do it injury-free too, because I don't know, if I was on that balance beam or hanging on something like that, I'd be in the ER every day.

Speaker 3: 6:05

My 11-year-old went to middle school on crutches. Today she just sprained her ankle, so not too bad. We've been relatively injury-free between the three of them. But yeah, it's a concern. But look, you've got to take the bubble wrap off and let them live right. Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 6:21

And they get a lot out of it too. A lot of lessons learned with doing athletics when you're young. Ok, but not a philosophy. I have two quotes I'm going to steal from you. I'll have to cite you, I think, on there. Maybe I won't, but at least now we know where we got them from. Before we jump into the conversation, can you tell us a little about yourself?

Speaker 3: 6:45

Yeah, sure thing, you know, obviously we covered. I'm a father of three, you know, and a husband first and foremost. Family first, always. But right behind that is professional life. Right, I've been doing Microsoft Dynamics. I've been in the industry now it's hard to believe 17 years. I think I've been saying 15 for the last couple years. I keep forgetting that the years are progressing. And I've been, you know, working with Western Computer Implementation and Support Partner for Microsoft Dynamics almost 10 years. It'll be 10 years in May, believe it or not. So it's been quite a while Working with companies to understand their needs and evaluate fit and to navigate the complex world of Microsoft Dynamics, which you guys know is ever-changing, especially in the SaaS world these days.

Speaker 3: 7:26

And so I've described myself sometimes as a Sherpa. You've got an executive, or you've got a business leader or even somebody who's been assigned in their organization. Hey, go get quotes and demos for the ERP, right? That's a tall order for somebody who's not living and eating and sleeping and breathing this stuff. So I kind of I take these people under my wing and I say you know, let me be your Sherpa, let me be your guide. Here's what to look out for, here's what's a fit. Here's what's not a fit. Maybe Dynamics isn't a fit, or or maybe Western Computer isn't a fit, and then send them on their way to go work with somebody you know who may be more tailored to their particular needs, and that's important, right? Nobody wants to get into things that they're not well-suited to help with, and so guiding people through their ERP journey, crm journey and helping them understand the Microsoft Dynamics stack well, that's what I do every day, and I do love it, I'm passionate about it, and so I consider myself lucky.

Speaker 1: 8:32

No, you do a great job and I like and appreciate what you say as you talk with customers, prospects, individuals looking to undertake the ERP journey, and you are absolutely correct, it is changing, ever-changing. I think by the time we're done with this recording, things will have changed from where we started. But I do appreciate, as you had mentioned is finding the right fit. Implementing an ERP system it can be many different things to it.

Speaker 1: 8:59

It's not so generic. It's what's involved in finding the right partner or finding the right application to help you or assist you or guide you on that journey is extremely important. And finding someone such as yourself that can take the time to tell you you know we may not be the fit for you or maybe this isn't the product for you, but also this is a product for you and this is how you can determine it's extremely important and it makes for a better relationship. And that's one of the most important things I'm starting to stress and emphasize because I see more how important it is. In this world of where everybody's thinking I hate to, I don't even want to say it but where everything's becoming more automated, you know that relationship and that guide becomes more that relationship and the trust that you have with someone, it becomes more and more important, and it's great that you're doing that stuff. 10 years, that's a decade, that's a long time. And then 17 years I'm trying to think, man, so I've known you for a while. It's been a while.

Speaker 3: 9:55

Yeah, I didn't have as many grays as I did back then and that ties back to the three daughters thing. But time flies, it moves pretty quickly. And that part you were just talking about ever changing, I mean now more than ever and I try to convey this to anybody looking at ERP long-term relationships with an implementation partner, consultant, whomever is going to be, you know, your guide here. It's more important than ever because the days of having a product NAV 2005, and you wait 10 years and then you upgrade, it's over. You know, and I mean this stuff is changing twice a year on a major level and more times than that on a minor level. You don't have somebody guiding you through the update process, taking advantage of new features and what's your long-term strategy to help me evolve as a company. You know that is now more important than ever because you can't the application changes constantly, so you've got to take that into account, I think, as you go, evaluate relationships with technology partners.

Speaker 1: 11:06

With ERP software implementations and the change in implementations. When you're working with customers, or even maybe not someone you're working with, what is some advice or some views that someone can take when they're going to? This is such a big question that I'm going to say in a very small, very few words, a small amount of words. I hope I sometimes I can ramble when someone's undertaking their journey to look either for a new ERP software application or when they're looking to maybe upgrade their new ERP application. I know there's some challenges or some things that someone needs to look out for that they come along the way. What are some words of wisdom or some advice of somebody should go through to undertake that journey?

Speaker 3: 11:53

Yeah, man, we could talk about this one for a while. So let me try to go as basic as I can. To start, you have to have a long term plan and vision, and so what I've heard sometimes is well, we just want to take what we have and we want to move it into the cloud and then we'll optimize processes after that, like, let me just look at the next step in the journey and then we'll figure out the rest of the way that we're going to go. I mean, that's a very dangerous thing to do because very likely to box yourselves in and prevent yourselves from actually achieving the things that you want to achieve down the road. So it's fine to take a phased approach and to walk and crawl and run and to evolve with how far you're going to take your technology, but you better have a plan that starts at the beginning and has concrete steps that you can then follow. So let's say, for instance, taking NAV to Business Central yeah, we have upgrade tools, we can migrate the data, we can migrate the configurations, we can take your custom code into BC, but then you're locked into quite a number of core decisions, right Locations and inventory, costing and dimensions, and all of this data that's in there now somewhat limits what you can do going forward.

Speaker 3: 13:14

Maybe you've acquired additional companies and you need a stronger multi-entity solution, or maybe you have divested companies and you don't need half the mods you used to have. Well, it's okay to walk and crawl and run, but that if you're building a 10-story building and you're only building the first two stories now, when you build the foundation, it better be for 10 stories, because otherwise you're going to build two and then you're going to have to tear the whole thing down and build a 10-story building. Right? So, on a high level, that's the number one piece of advice that I would give executives, decision makers, as you plan this out.

Speaker 3: 13:50

You don't have to do it all at once. Don't let anybody make you pile too much into the initial project. That can be daunting and that can be a pitfall as well. Right, change management is critical. If you change everything at once, you have a lot of internal bandwidth required to do that. You have a lot of change management challenges with people changing everything at once. So you don't have to do that either, but you do have to have a plan, and you better make sure that that first step has the long-term vision in mind, or you end up boxing yourself in.

Speaker 2: 14:23

Does a conversation have to start internally before they even start looking for partners and such?

Speaker 3: 14:31

Yeah, 100%. So how can you make a plan for how we're going to get somewhere until you know where you want to go? And that has to happen internally. Now it may be valuable to ask for the advice of some technology partners. Don't let them get you into a high pressure. Sign by the end of the month, sign by the end of the year, get a big discount type scenario, because it's not in your best interest, right. But you can glean some advice from the right people. And certainly that needs to start internally. And one part of that is informing the organization very early. And this has to start earlier than most people think that the change is coming. And you can tell people change is coming. And hey, we are changing our ERP, we are changing our CRM coming. And hey, we are changing our erp, we are changing our crm. So anyone who has kids, right, you tell them to do something, go do this. It's the first question they're going to ask in turn, like this, for your internal people, what's the first question your kids are going to ask why, why? Yeah, every time, right. So you better be ready to answer that for your people in a meaningful way.

Speaker 3: 15:45

We are changing because we're on ancient technology. We can't aggregate data and drive business decisions with our data. We are at security risk because we're at an old on-prem system that is ripe for cyber attack. We're falling behind our competitors. They're upgrading, they're getting their data in order and preparing for taking advantage of all the great competitive advantages that AI is going to present that maybe we don't even know what those are going to be yet. But you better be ready. You can't be on disparate on-prem systems with half your data in Excel and expect to go take advantage of the AI that's coming down the track, because we won't be ready to do that.

Speaker 3: 16:29

So, explaining the why to everybody in the organization we're changing, we're going to go evaluate solutions. Here's why we're doing it. It's important because your people will sometimes have some apprehension, right? Hey, people will sometimes have some apprehension, right? Hey, we've been using our AS400. We've been using GP for 20 years. It works just fine. Why are you trying to ruin my life, right? I mean, you've got to explain that internally if you're going to have buy-in. So it goes beyond that, right, it goes beyond just why are we doing it as an organization? But how does it impact me?

Speaker 3: 17:11

I'm the AP clerk and you're telling me we're going to implement, you know, ap automation. That concerns me, right? You know I've been writing paper pick tickets in the warehouse for 15 years and you want me to use a scanner. Like, why am I doing this?

Speaker 3: 17:29

I'm a salesperson who has this great notebook with all my notes on it and I don't need a CRM. You have to explain, like, well, here's what's in it for you, right? You have all these, you have all these notes in your notebook. If you can, if you can, get that into a system and allow it to prioritize your tasks for you and track your notes and update you when it's time to contact somebody and prioritize which opportunities might be most viable, it's going to help you close more business. It's going to help put money in your pocket. Just as an example on the CRM side, right, people need that. What's in it for me, right? Wiifm if you guys have heard that acronym like what's in it for me and that's, you have to always put yourself in someone else's shoes and think of it from their perspective. Why are we changing as an organization? It works fine. Well, here's why. Well, how's it going to impact me? Here's how it's going to impact you. It's going to be positive, right? So I think those are some.

Speaker 1: 18:32

Definitely, you know, to answer your question, you've got to start that conversation internally very early, that is so important and often overlooked, because some of the most successful implementations I have seen have been those implementations that included the individuals that are going to actually go through the journey with them, because they have some what do people say? User adoption or user acceptance, in a sense, because if they understand and they feel, if they're part of it, they're going to work better to you know, help, make it successful and understand instead of being apprehensive and maybe potentially having, as you had mentioned, maybe some fear of the new system, because they have been using that AS400 system for 15 years and now you want me to use a new system. I'll be uncomfortable, you know, like to fish out of water, as they kind of say. So now what's going to happen? I'm not going to be able to do my job.

Speaker 2: 19:29

So it's a question on that when you're talking about change management, what is it for them? Who? Who should deliver that message? So, especially when there's a big change coming and, um, you know you're going to have to talk to individuals or individuals who are going to be affected by this change, who should deliver that message?

Speaker 3: 19:51

In my opinion, the first message should come from the top. It should be maybe it's an email, maybe you have a monthly or quarterly company meeting with everybody on board and you're updating here's the status of the organization and here's where we're at. And we do that internally and our CEO, kristen, leads that. She talks about the big things first. Right, here's where we're going. She's the captain of the ship, right? So where are we going? First of all, in general, and why. I think that message best comes from senior leadership, maybe even all the way at the top, like if we were going to make that change internally, I could tell you right now Kristen would be the one to announce it here's where we're going, guys. But then some of the more granular stuff you know, like announce it, here's where we're going, guys. But then some of the more granular stuff you know, like you know, how does it affect me personally? That probably needs to come from someone who more directly manages your role, right, your direct report, maybe, or somebody, maybe a sales VP or a marketing VP or COO or somebody one level down to. Hey, let's disseminate this on a more granular level.

Speaker 3: 21:03

But the why is also probably important to come from the top. It can't be. Hey guys, we're moving off of our AS400. We need to get on a cloud-based system. So thanks for coming. It can't be that right. It has to be all the things that we talked about. Here's why our competitors are getting ahead of us. We're not able to take advantage of our data, we have security risks. We're all in the same boat, literally together as an organization. So here's why we need to steer it in a new direction, from a technological, but technology stack foundation. You know, from a technology stack perspective, I should say, and that should come from the top.

Speaker 3: 21:41

But then, as you get more granular, well, how is it going to impact me personally? Also, how are you going to empower me to use this new stuff and that's a big part of it as well Are you going, you know, am I just going to be expected to watch a few YouTube videos? Are you going to give me hands-on training? Are we going to have consultants on site when we go live? Those things are going to be going through your people's head. So, after you get through the, here's what we're doing and here's why we're doing it, and here's how it's going to impact you. Well then it's well, here's how we're going to help you succeed in doing it. That part of it comes next. I mean, how are you going to empower me to do it? So that's probably not the CEO actually telling the AP clerk. Here's how we're going to help you do it, or here's how it's going to impact your particular job, and that's a few levels down. I would say.

Speaker 2: 22:30

I love the clarification in that because you're right, the first message should come from the top executive, either the CEO or somebody at the C-suite or VP level that can relay the message of why the big change is happening as an organization and where the company is going. And you clarified that from the individual standpoint of what is it. For me, it needs to come from their direct who they directly report to, because then you know they interact with them more than they interact with the CEO. So I appreciate the clarification.

Speaker 2: 23:06

There's always been kind of confusion of like who should be delivering that message for people that are, you know, that uses the application all the time. You know, how is that going to affect my job, the director? You know the supervisor should be working with them and they have to be on the same page, right? They have to believe this change is important for the organization. So when it trickles down to that individual person they don't feel like they're. You know they're alone, that they're hearing it from their direct supervisor. This change is amazing, so someone has to champion that change as well. It has to go all the way down to your supervisor so that your people that are using it they don't feel like you know, oh crap, I should be looking for a new job or something like that.

Speaker 3: 23:53

Yeah, absolutely Christopher. And there's one more level there where the CEO has to be aligned with the next layer of management, because you can't have each manager making their own decisions either. We're still pointing this ship in the right direction. Right, we're going to the Bahamas one way or another. And if one department wants to go to Bermuda and one department wants to go to Key Largo, it's not where we're going. Department wants to go to Key Largo, that's not where we're going. So that CEO has to empower their managers to say here's where we're going, guys, and here's why and here's how it's going to affect you. And that is critical.

Speaker 3: 24:30

I remember a project recently where there was one individual who was very used to doing things a certain way for quite a long time. And when the project started unfolding and we started explaining, well, this is how we're going to do it in Business Central, there's an immediate roadblock. No, we're not going to do it. That way is what the comment was. And this you know. I was having this conversation with the project manager the other day. That's very dangerous. And she said you know, no matter what we're doing it, we've got to do it this way.

Speaker 3: 25:03

Now, this is someone who is one or two pegs down in the organization, throwing up a roadblock. That's a red flag in a project, right? So as a technology partner, we owe it to senior leadership to align with them and say, hey, your person's asking for this, there's a perfectly reasonable way to do it with the out-of-the-box software. They want us to do a modification that's going to cost quite a lot and really kind of, you know, cause long-term care and feeding as these updates come out. And you know, philosophically we're totally against customizing the system in order to meet everybody's unique needs. There needs to be some adoption of best practice. So it's our job as a technology partner to raise that concern with the C-level executives and say, hey, here's what your person's asking for and here's what we're telling them, and here's why writing a bunch of custom code to do it exactly the way this one person wants to do is a bad idea. So that goes along with the change management. If you want to control timeline and budget in a project, it's the only way to do it.

Speaker 1: 26:12

Yeah, does the individuals, and I thank you for pointing that out, because it's important to have awareness of what's going on also at the levels of the implementation, as you had stated. That's one of the questions I actually wanted to speak with you about is how can you handle or prevent that and you had mentioned from the technology partner point of view bring that information to the leadership team or the stakeholders for the project? What about internally? Is there something that you could suggest within the change management process to help minimize the roadblocks that may sometimes derail an entire project, because you can't have one or two people that create such a challenging roadblock, either through modifications or saying that they're incapable of doing their job now because of this, and it can cause some problems for an implementation and for an organization.

Speaker 3: 27:07

Yeah, absolutely. So. You know, all of these change management aspects kind of build on doing that, but when it comes down to it, it's about communication and explaining to an individual, and this should come from that individual's boss, probably, or direct report, depending on your organizational structure. Here's why what you're asking for is not in line with our vision that our CEO laid out on the company meeting two months ago. It's going to be costly, it's software as a service, it's a cloud-based solution that's updated every two times a year. So they may not know that right, they may not know the why behind it and they may not understand why it's a pitfall. So you have to be prepared to have the conversation and communicate effectively. So I'm going to give you another quote here, brad, and this one I love. It's my favorite.

Speaker 3: 28:03

In all walks of life, right, but especially in business, the main problem in communication is the illusion that it's already happened. So if these people don't know why it's a bad idea, there you go, it's three. So if they don't know why it's a bad idea, they're going to push back harder. But again, getting down to the why and not assuming that they know, customization's an ERP pitfall and we want to leverage best practices and it's going to cause problem with updates and all of these other reasons that the three of us, and probably a lot of the people listening to this podcast, already know that these are pitfalls. Well, this person who's asking for this modification to make the system do exactly what their old system did for 15 years, they don't understand that. They just say, hey, this is how I operate, I need the system to do it. And they cross their arms and stomp their feet, explaining the reasoning to them and communicating what you already know and you live, eat, sleep and breathe this stuff every day as an ERP pro. They don't know that stuff. They're not an ERP pro. This is the first time they've been through an ERP project ever. Maybe, or maybe, you know, maybe they did one 15 years ago. So I think that that's where it comes in.

Speaker 3: 29:23

If you want to break down those barriers, to change this method of you know, announcing it here's why. And then you know here's how it's going to affect you. And no, we're not going to rebuild the old system. And here's why we're not going to rebuild the old system. That's the only way to break those barriers down. And hey, man, I've seen it.

Speaker 3: 29:43

We've gotten projects that have gone back to Microsoft and they say Business Central's terrible product or the partner blew it.

Speaker 3: 29:55

Maybe it could be one reason or another. And then Microsoft, sometimes they'll bring those projects to us We've been doing this for so long and we'll get a hold of it and we'll say where are you in the process right now? Before we can help you, we need to understand where in the process your company is and what broke down, and sometimes the users haven't been in the system until it's time for UAT. That's a big problem, you know, because all of these things that we've been talking about are going to rush to the surface as you're trying to go live, as you're trying to prepare to go live, right, and so it needs to happen. To go back to what Christopher asked earlier way before the project even begins internally, that alignment needs to happen. Then you got to get the users in the system early and let them air their grievances and then explain the why and here's why we're approaching it a certain way and how they're going to still achieve their same business processes, maybe through a new method, following the best practices that the system allows them to do.

Speaker 1: 31:04

Yeah, so many things are going through my mind and speaking of UAT and user acceptance testings, one of the challenges or the questions that I hear or see when someone's switching to a new system and I use the word switching loosely there, it could be moving from another ERP software system to something in the Microsoft Dynamics stack or even upgrading from a previous version is the users have a full-time position now working with their application or in the business to get orders shipped, to get vendors paid, whatever their function may be within an organization. What is a good approach to giving them the opportunity to get into the application and be able to work with the application while still functioning within the business, and how much time should someone expect to be able to, or should they allocate for someone to be able to work with and be comfortable with the system in its infancy and then back when you're in the UAT phase just about to go live?

Speaker 3: 32:03

Yeah, I mean these are great questions. So you nailed the number one thing that you need to do to allow users to get into the system, and that's providing them the time to do that. I wouldn't recommend starting an ERP project or finishing one during your busy season. If you have seasonality in your business, you need to talk to your technology partner about where are the subject matter experts going to be needed. Is it on the front end, is it on the back end, is it in the middle? And typically I find that that's on the front end and the back end more so than in the middle, where we're building the system right. If we're doing custom development or integrations or configurations, those decisions are made through analysis sessions and design sessions on the front end and then they're solidified on the back end in deploying the system prepping for go live, testing and training and that's where your heavy usage is going to be.

Speaker 3: 32:58

So I find that if people are already, if your people are already maxed out, you can't put an ERP project on top of them. You know to add to what they're already. You know unable to keep up with and that may mean bringing some temporary help on. That may mean you know prioritizing projects and doing things one at a time. So, along those lines, I've found hiring temporary help or even semi-permanent to permanent help is better done to backfill the day-to-day jobs of your people and let them the people who are going to use the system long-term focus on the project. If you're going to staff up for a project, right, don't staff up and have temporary people working on the project. This is what you're going to be living with for a long time. So if you're going to have to increase staff to do a project, I would say backfill the mundane stuff, the day-to-day, and then free up your people's time to focus on a very important investment In European man. It is an important investment. It's costly, it's risky, it's time-consuming, it can make or break some businesses. I mean you've got to invest the appropriate amount of time to do that.

Speaker 3: 34:21

Now, that does vary by job role. You know you're going to have your subject matter experts in each area that are going to really own the processes and under normal methodology, they will be disseminating that information later on to some of the other end users. So it's not as if everybody in your organization needs to dedicate you know percentage of their day. You know your subject matter experts, though, you should probably plan on the front end of a project analysis and design 25% of your day. If you're a subject matter expert doing an ERP project maybe a little bit conservative, but I mean, you know shortcutting that is at your own peril. Conservative, but I mean, you know, shortcutting that is at your own peril. Now, if you're the internal project manager for a client, which is a critical role and sometimes this comes as a surprise to clients who, or prospective clients who, are saying, well, what do you need from my people? Well, we need someone to be an internal project manager. Okay, I thought you guys were going to manage a project. Well, yeah, we are. We're going to manage the budget and we're going to manage the resources and we're going to manage risks in analysis sessions, to take part in design sessions.

Speaker 3: 35:45

Somebody at that PM level should be empowered, whether it's directly or through direct access to the decision makers, to make those design decisions and not stick a project in neutral as we're making these decisions. I've seen it happen. I had a project. They were very passionate about the end go-live date. There were some critical reasons. They wanted to go live. The project got stuck in design for eight weeks on one decision where the whole solution pivoted on it.

Speaker 3: 36:17

Right, if you don't have somebody empowered to quickly move this stuff, there's no partner in the world that can control your timeline. I mean, we're waiting for them for two months and that goes both ways, you know. But I would say that you know empowering that PM internally and that PM better have 50% minimum of their time devoted to the project for the duration. And if it's a big company with a big project, it should be dedicated. I mean this is business critical stuff. So SMEs, maybe 25% on the front end of the project, 25% on the back end. As you approach GoLive, that might ramp up a little bit. You know you're going through UAT and you're really getting ready PMs I mean they should, this should be their main focus, that the internal client side PM who's going to herd the cats on the client side, so to speak, and make sure everybody's doing what they need to do. That should be their, their sole focus really during a project.

Speaker 2: 37:15

You made a point there about giving them time to work on this implementation of bringing a brand new ERP, and I did a session on this early this year, beginning this year, even late last year in some of the conferences and one of the statistics I found, I think, through oakcom that focus on change management and the effects of change management if you don't do it. It's stated that 75% of employees that are going through ERP implementation or even changes in the organization suffers from moderate to high level stress. So think about that. When you don't give them time to work on this ERP implementation, 75% of your team members or employees that are part of that project are stressing out and interestingly enough, that 18% of that also the same statistics here, the same source 18% of that leave work or quit during an ERP implementation. So nearly 20%. So if you have 10 team members, two of them is more likely going to quit if you don't have proper change management.

Speaker 2: 38:32

So that's very important to consider. And if they do leave even one person leave that's critical to that group. That will take you back. That's going to push your project a little further. Now you're going to find a new subject matter expert or even the person that is supposed to help decide of how you can, how you're supposed to architect your business process, leaves. That is a significant loss to a project yeah, no question.

Speaker 3: 39:00

And think about everything you've invested in getting that. You know, freeing that person up and paying consultants to work with them, and they've built up all this knowledge and they've provided all this insight, and then they get burnt out and walk out the door. Yeah, christopher, great point. I mean that's a massive business impact. Think about the cost for something like that. It's hard to quantify, but it's huge.

Speaker 1: 39:24

The stress is important, which goes back as you're going through the process. What type of feedback system or support system do you see helpful in an implementation during post, pre, post and pre, and then also during the UAT phase of an implementation?

Speaker 3: 39:44

So are you talking about an internal feedback system for the client, or maybe between the client and the partner?

Speaker 1: 39:50

I think both, because we're talking about the changes that an organization is going to undertake, and change will occur at all levels of it. It will be the individuals that are at the executive level, the individuals that are doing the task in the various departments and we talked about how someone could be a roadblock Chris had mentioned about stress levels within there and then also, if someone's going through it, then we're looking for user adoption. How can we enhance or what can we put in place for a feedback loop and a support loop to help minimize the challenges that we're going to have through an ERP implementation?

Speaker 3: 40:27

Yeah, sure. So between the partner and the customer. I'll start there. You've got to have a cadence of status right. Status meetings, stand-ups could be a steer co-meeting. Not every organization is big enough to have a steer co. A steer co essentially what it is. You have the key decision makers, the key executive sponsors, the project managers on a meeting and you're providing the whole point of it is candid feedback.

Speaker 3: 40:55

Now, in a status meeting it might be a bit more granular, and so, for instance, ours, you know, it's how we color code it, right. How are we doing on timeline? Is it red, is it yellow, is it green? How are we doing on budget? What are our risks? And then, how are we doing on team morale, which is what we're talking about here. Right, what is the pulse of your people right now? And that's a subjective conversation. Typically, and very commonly, that conversation starts with our team providing feedback to leadership from the client on. Here's what I'm getting from your people, and I'm sensing some pushback on a certain process, like the example I gave earlier, wanting to over-modify to meet a particular use case that could be better handled out of the box. That's a red flag that has to be raised and it goes back to communication in a status meeting and those should be common Every two weeks at a minimum. Let's get together, let's talk about the risks and let's talk about the timeline and the morale. Let us tell you what we're seeing and hearing and you tell us what you're seeing and hearing from your people. Now the steer code is a bit different. It's somewhat higher level. Maybe once a month and maybe once every two months, and that is okay. On the executive level, here's where the project's going. We're generally pointing our boat in the right direction and, you know, maybe at that point, hey, we need some more executive level change management to help us through this process. If we're going to help you that's a conversation that I've had many times, you know, coming from analysis into design hey, we need to control the budget here. Okay, well, if we're going to control the budget, we need your help to help your people understand why we're doing this the way we're doing it, why we're not rebuilding the custom Salesforce application that's been in place for 15 years and you know it's just right, in line with everything we've been talking about Now.

Speaker 3: 43:05

Internally, obviously, your people have to have some type of forum to talk to your internal decision makers, project leads. That could be the project PM as kind of an initial stage like, hey, here's my concern, here's what I'm feeling, and I would say, you know, not only empowering people to do that. Maybe you have internal meetings every other week, how's the project going? Maybe it's a survey, you know, send a survey, monkey out and say, well, what are your feelings on the project right now, what are your concerns, and get that feedback internally right, and you have to not only empower people to do it, but you have to encourage people to do it. You have to maybe incentivize them some way. Fill out the survey, get a $10 Starbucks gift card, whatever it might be.

Speaker 3: 43:57

Or, again, it goes back to explaining why, hey, we need to hear what you're feeling on this project, because we don't want to continue to go down a path that's causing angst.

Speaker 3: 44:08

We need to know, though, down a path that's causing angst. You know we need to know, though, and so you've got to provide a forum internally, you've got to provide incentivization or at least encouragement. Hey, give us your feedback on the project and then, once you get that, as a PM, you can in turn, you know, communicate that to your project team through the status meeting or through the SteerCo, and provide that, hey, here's what we're hearing. And then you match that up with the partners, who, typically consultants, can be pretty opinionated, you know, and that's for good reason. These people are professionals, They've done sometimes 100 projects or more in their life and they've seen this kind of stuff happen and they need to say look, here's what we're seeing. I'm seeing a red flag here, I'm seeing a red flag there. And it goes back to communicating with each other. You can't assume that one party knows what the other knows, because usually it's not the case.

Speaker 1: 45:00

That's some good. I'm listening to what you're saying and so many things are going through my mind and so many experiences that I've had that go along with what you're saying and where some challenges and some roadblocks had come in implementations as we've been talking. I started to think about this because you talked about budget, you talked about go-live dates, you talked about changes to an organization. What's the advice to be able to properly plan the timing of an erp implementation and the budget of an erp implementation, because there's some variables in there.

Speaker 1: 45:41

In my opinion, going through some projects and I'm just looking for maybe some insights from you you have individuals that need to train, you have individuals that need to train. You have individuals that need to test, you have designs, you have testing itself. You may have some remediation because something may not work as they originally intended or they may find that the process could be slightly varied for bigger benefit. What's the best approach to take to be able to one, plan the budget, two, plan the duration, to be able to determine when to go live? Because it sounds to me Ryan build me a house, two stories, two bedrooms, I want to move in next week and some people think that oh, wow, okay, you can just do it. It's ERP software, just install it. What are some realistic expectations or processes that someone should go to to get a good sense of what it takes, so that they don't go over budget, they don't have a late implementation?

Speaker 3: 46:42

I know challenges arise but I look for the realism. Yeah, the house analogy. I can't help but bring up something that our relatively new VP of sales, ben Volte, brought up the other day when we were in our internal sales marketing retreat and he said if somebody asks you for a budget, he brought up the house analogy that you just did. He said well, I can build you a two-story house, brick, with three bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms. Here's roughly what it's going to cost. What I can't control is when you know your wife comes and says well, here are the faucets I want, and here's a tile I want and here's the flooring that I want. And that's what your job is as a leader to control those type of nice-to-haves and peripheral type stuff. So the tendency when there's a big change is to say, okay, we're changing, guys, we're going, we're on GP, it's end of life, we're going to Dynamics 365. And then everybody from every department says, well, here's what I want, here's what I want, here's what I want, here's what I want, because they think that's their only chance and that can absolutely impact time. I mean not can it dramatically impacts time and budget, right. And so focusing on why you're making that change from a leadership perspective and reining in the. I want this, I want that from each department is really important in the first stage, Assuming that there is a target timeline and there always is a target budget. Right, you've got to say, well, hey, listen, we're using GP for accounts receivable, accounts payable and GL. And yeah, maybe we want to use Dynamics 365 for more, maybe we want to expand it into the operational side of the house and maybe we want to have a vendor portal and connect our e-commerce website. Well, if timeline and budget are constraints, you say let's focus on what we need to do first. Let's get GL and AP and AR into Dynamics 365. Could be Business Central, could be F&O. I've seen GP clients move to both.

Speaker 3: 49:05

Now I will caveat that and say you do like we talked about earlier. If you're only going to replace one for one, what you have now, need to have the long-term goal in mind and make sure that you're setting that proper foundation with a roadmap. And that might mean a heavier analysis and design phase where you plan everything out and then you deploy your core business reason. Why did we make this change? You know, yes, your marketing person's asking for automation and your sales VP wants CRM integration, but you don't have any of these things. Now, you know, maybe you're producing.

Speaker 3: 49:39

I've seen people I mean, I know you've seen it guys Like, hey, how are you managing your production? Schedule, whiteboard Excel Okay well, we have to have it in phase one. Why You're schedule whiteboard excel okay well, we have to have it in phase one. Why you're doing it this way. Now, right, so focus, why are you making this change? And let's do that. And let's absolutely plan for the rest and execute it in chunks and phases if need be. Here's what it looks like if we do it all at once, timeline and budget wise. And here's what it looks like if we, if we kind of chunk it out and you know, maybe there's a business critical event coming, like that's what I always try to get down to. So here's what I hear. I want to go live January 1st and I asked this question. Every time I hear that and I typically already know the answer. What do you guys, what do you typically hear around that? Do you ever hear that?

Speaker 3: 50:27

Oh, I hear that all the time, and the reason is typically that's when my fiscal year ends.

Speaker 1: 50:34

Yes.

Speaker 3: 50:35

Which to a consultant implementing this stuff does not matter. We have done over a thousand projects at Western Computer. Very, very few of them have gone live January 1st. First of all, I mean I know everyone's fiscal calendar is not January 1st, but going live on the fiscal year is not important in an ERP project. We can, absolutely. We have tools to do GL. You know true ups and measure net change. We can navigate that and do navigate that on every project, and so that is not really a valid reason to constrain your organization around an arbitrary timeline. People think it is, but it's not. Constrain your organization around a an arbitrary timeline people think it is, but it's not, and it affects your people.

Speaker 2: 51:15

By the way, january 1st is around the holidays.

Speaker 3: 51:18

It screws everyone up that don't want to go to work time because it's the worst time to go it is you have vacations, you have holidays, people being stressed out about gifts and stuff.

Speaker 1: 51:27

So you saying january 1st, chris and I had this conversation recently about that it is, it's you. Just, you know, you just have to pick a realistic date and think of the other constraints that are also occurring. And if January 1st is the date, there has to be a reason other than, oh, it's the best time of year to do it, or it's our year end, as you had mentioned.

Speaker 3: 51:48

Yeah. So so you know, if you put those arbitrary constraints around your project, you're not going to make the most efficient decisions for your organization. Now maybe, on the other hand, you've got a more real reason. Maybe my renewal for my ERP application is coming up and if I go past August 31st I'm going to be automatically signed up for three more years and I need a system to run my business. That's a situation where you really need to boil it down to requirements. We call it the MVP deployment right Minimum viable product. And what do I need to make happen? And how do we work together Because it is cannot be all partner guys.

Speaker 3: 52:34

I mean, this is a two way street. What do we collaboratively need to do to make that date happen? Because that's a real date. Or I've seen, if you ever heard, of a TSA, which is essentially an agreement when you're divested from a company and you're and they say we are going to give you a TSA I forget the acronym, technology services agreement or something like that but basically what it does is it says, okay, we're spinning your company off and you could stay on our systems until X date.

Speaker 3: 53:06

That's a real reason to have a hard and fast go live date, you're not going to have a system to run right. Or maybe there's some exorbitant fee or penalty you're going to have to pay if you go past that date. Fiscal year is not one, so don't constrain yourself based on that but some of these other reasons. If you have those dates, you have to be willing to boil it down to business critical. What do we need to go live? Don't shortcut yourself and box yourself in by foregoing the long-term vision that still needs to happen. But then you know the nice to haves and the peripheral stuff and everyone raising their hand and saying what they want. That's going to have to wait in those types of scenarios if you want to control the timeline and budget.

Speaker 2: 53:44

I love the analogy of building a home, brad, and I use that quite a bit, but a quick short story of using the deck analogy as well, because it's not just an analogy. That's what I'm going through right now, setting up a timeline. When I bought this house, it has a pretty huge deck. I think Brad's seen it. It's almost 1,600 square feet deck. It's massive, and this house was built in the early 90 90s and so we have to replace it. Does it still work? Absolutely, it's like an erp system, like current erp. Can it still work? Yeah, I can still stand on it. You know you still host things like that, but eventually you're gonna have to replace it, right and and because of safety reasons and things like that.

Speaker 2: 54:29

So when you're budgeting stuff like this and ERP implementation, similar to budgeting a deck, we have a range and then but you also don't understand, you don't know the underlying issues as well. So like, let's say, they start taking it apart and they realize you may have to change some of these beams and so forth and so forth. So you have to consider those gotchas and maybe a little bit of leeway. You know, maybe 10%, 15, 20% of budget overrun, which is, by the way. It's common in ERP implementation, there's always going to be an ERP budget overrun.

Speaker 2: 55:04

But I had a timeline in mind. You know, it's like I want to be able to enjoy it in the summer. So I'm like asking these guys now I'm becoming like some clients, right, I'm becoming some like that Like I need to get this done in like two months because summer's around the corner, I need to be able to enjoy this thing. And they're like no, that's not realistic, because you may have some permitting and all that stuff. And so I have to remember is like maybe a good time is to get it done after summer, where it's not much quieter and I can actually make some changes along the way. Like you said, my wife wants to have better railings and stuff like that. So those things to consider as well. But budgeting is really really tough. But you have to give it a little bit of range and plus minus.

Speaker 1: 55:53

Budgeting and scheduling is a challenge for the points you make and I do.

Speaker 1: 55:56

I always say ERP implementations is a house build or house remodel and you know what you want and you have to figure. And, ryan, you hit on some other key points. The partner works with you through the implementation, but you live with it after the implementation and a lot of implementations I see have struggles. They put a lot of it more onto the partner. Now the partner can guide you, the partner can do the work to help you get it running, but they're not there using the system day to day. Nor should they be, because they're there to help you implement. So your comment about the partner working with them but it's their system that they have to accept and to use, to going forward, is important, and I had a million other things I wanted to say and, as usual, it goes right outside of my brain.

Speaker 3: 56:43

I love the deck analogy. I mean house analogy. Take your pick, but I'm thinking you know, christopher, while you're explaining the deck, I'm thinking you know what is the risk if you don't do that. And that is very much akin to somebody on an old on-premise SQL server. I've seen it happen. On-premise servers are ripe for cyber attack guys and I've seen it several times. In the middle of deciding how are we going to do ERP, how are we going to get to the cloud? Hacked, can't ship, can't invoice, can't pay vendors I mean business ground to a halt and the cost of that is tremendous. So you know, don't wait until the deck falls off the house.

Speaker 2: 57:25

You know someone get hurt, it's too late, absolutely.

Speaker 3: 57:28

It's too late.

Speaker 1: 57:28

right, it's absolutely true. I've seen that in implementation with somebody they did. They had ransomware on their system during an implementation because of whatever reason, and they had to spend a lot of money getting their system intact before they could even do the implementation. The other key point that you made, too, was again with the house analogy and what I liked what you had is do what you need to get the business operational. All the stuff that you may not be doing now. Have a roadmap to get there because they could delay you.

Speaker 1: 57:59

You're already going through enough changes, as it is through a new system, that if you can keep some of those workflows in place with the understanding that you're going to gain some efficiencies, obviously there's a reason why someone's switching, like you had mentioned, that you're going to gain some efficiencies.

Speaker 1: 58:11

Obviously there's a reason why someone's switching, like you had mentioned. It could be because of, like you had mentioned, if you're not going to have a system if you had grown, if you're looking for operational efficiencies a number of different reasons why people switch. But having that roadmap is extremely important because these oh, I can do this. Oh, I can do that. If you're going through an implementation it this, oh, I can do that as you're going through an implementation throws the entire implementation off, and I have seen it because they see all this cool stuff that the new system has that they don't even do today, not to say that they can't grow or their business can't change their processes to utilize those new features, but the more complexity and changes that you add to it can also slow down the implementation.

Speaker 2: 58:47

so you're, they get hung up with the appliances brand. That's what takes forever, exactly.

Speaker 1: 58:53

And they forget that the roof still hasn't been put on and it's leaking and they're tied up about the appliances which can go in after the house is built, exactly Even after you move in. See, I use the house model and remodel with everyone I speak with for these reasons, because you can move into a house and have shiny appliances afterwards, but you still can have a little portable refrigerator to keep things cool as you're moving into the house and you're filling it out but that's what we deal with right with the erp implementation.

Speaker 2: 59:21

Somehow everyone's already want to know what kind of couches and appliances they want to put in there, and and all that and how it's structured.

Speaker 1: 59:30

Well, they get excited, so you can put a picture on the wall of the couch and all this other stuff and say you will get there, but let's not lose sight of we need to move in and get there. Yeah, speaking of all of this, we think about user adoption, we think about EAP implementations. How can you measure user adoption? And also, what is and how do you measure a successful ERP implementation?

Speaker 3: 59:59

Those metrics have to be identified ahead of time and they're different. Erp is different than CRM. I know you guys are ERP guys. I kind of span both and just to touch on that briefly, I will say ERP user adoption is easier to drive because it's required. You've got a chip, you've got an invoice, you've got to pay your vendors, you've got to receive your inventory or you can't run your business. Crm, you better have a plan to have adoption or it will sit and collect dust and you will have an expensive, you know Rolodex in a digital format.

Speaker 3: 1:00:32

So, establishing metrics ahead of time, what do we hope to get out of this implementation? Do we hope to, you know, decrease our day sales outstanding or optimize our inventory so that we don't have inventory that's sitting unused, which has a cost, or we don't have sales that can, you know, maybe not be fulfilled because we don't have inventory that's sitting unused, which has a cost, or we don't have sales that can maybe not be fulfilled because we don't have enough inventory, or maybe we want to be able for a manufacturer I hear this all the time we want to be able to measure our availability to promise. So somebody calls our sales team and says, hey, I need a widget by July 1st, six weeks from now. Can you do it? I don't know. Let me go consult the whiteboard, right? Well, all of those parameters are able to be set up in the ERP and if your goal is to achieve availability to promise, the tools are there in any modern ERP not any, but Dynamics, certainly. And you know, if the inputs aren't put in right vendor lead time and capacity on the shop floor and planned production orders and all of this data needs to still be input.

Speaker 3: 1:01:52

I was sitting in a conference room a couple months ago I'm not going to say where because that might give my customer away here but we were going through all of the ways to calculate availability to promise for them and they said, oh, yeah, yeah, we have that in our system now. Okay, then where's? Why aren't you available to promise? Well, we don't, we don't input any of the data. We don't. You don't use it. Okay, a system's not going to fix that.

Speaker 3: 1:02:16

Guys, you know, you've got to. You've got to mandate this internally in some way. We can't make your people do it. We could teach them how to do it, but but defining some kind of metrics and goals KPIs, whatever you want to call them like hey, our goal coming out of this is to be able, when our salesperson asks us for an availability, to promise a widget delivery that we can actually give them a concrete number.

Speaker 3: 1:02:43

Right, that's more of a vague KPI, you know metrics. Like, we want to reduce our inventory on hand by 25% and still be able to fulfill our sales goals. Right, that's more of a hard metric, but those should be established ahead of the project and then measured after the project. Maybe there's some kind of incentive tied to it, bonus structure, some kind of performance measurement, maybe not, maybe it's just more of a team effort, right? Hey, here's why we're doing it. We want to be able to, you know, have a higher level of customer satisfaction, and we can't do that if we're just guessing at, at availability, to promise and hoping that it works out. Hope is not a strategy.

Speaker 1: 1:03:21

There's number four hope is not a strategy. That's your fourth quote I have to write all these down.

Speaker 1: 1:03:29

When I watch this afterwards, I'm going to write all these down. When I watch this afterwards, I'm going to write all these down. I've been trying to get to them, but you're going too quickly. Planning is so important and you hit that even for the measurement of the success, because that way you can say it's successful. So if you look back, if someone says, oh, we're late or we're doing this, or they feel it's worse than it was I've gone through implementations like that, where they lost sight of that it actually is successful, because they may have had some challenges along the way, not saying it was a bad experience, but that planning is worthwhile and, just like building a house or cutting wood, all that planning up front saves you in the end.

Speaker 1: 1:04:02

Sometimes people want to cut corners, to speed things along or to save a dollar or two, but, as I always tell Chris, they don't have the time to do it the first time, but you have the time to do it three times after you go live or even fix, spend months fixing the data afterwards and, to your point about, you can't get something. Systems are a tool that you use. Systems aren't going to do things for you. Because I hear these requests. Well, I want a report that tells me this Well, you need to enter the data, you have the data. I don't have time to enter the data, I just need the system to tell me this. I can't tell you how many times I hear similar scenarios. And the reality is it's a tool for you to use to become more efficient or to get an output, not do the output for you. Well, maybe in the future it will do everything for us and we don't need to do anything, but yeah, I love the house analogy all the time.

Speaker 2: 1:04:51

It's like putting copper pipes rather than pecs. You know pecs is better, but uh, hey, we got to do copper because that's what we've always been using.

Speaker 3: 1:05:00

So yeah, yeah, why not just build all the house, though, and then switch out the pipes, christopher?

Speaker 2: 1:05:05

I know, right, that's what people do, it's true right, they're in the.

Speaker 1: 1:05:11

they're in the drywall already or in the brick already, so we've got to take the whole wall down as well, because you know you want to do that you put the wrong pipes in Well, mr Ryan, sir, and also don't cut yourself short on that.

Speaker 1: 1:05:22

You do CRM and ERP, but you do so much more. You deal with Business Central, F&O, f&scm, fx whatever they call it today CRM, a little of the Azure stuff too. So you do quite a bit and you're quite knowledgeable with it, and I appreciate all the information that you share with us and I appreciate you for taking the time to speak with us today. Time is truly the currency of life, and any moment that someone spends with us is a moment that they're not doing something else. We appreciate it and we value that. If someone would like to get in contact with you to learn more about change management, erp implementations or how they can have some more enhancements or features through their ERP implementation project, or how to even come up with an ERP system to use, how can someone contact you?

Speaker 3: 1:06:03

Yeah, sure. So LinkedIn is tried and true. There are not many Ryan Poliniacs out there on LinkedIn, so you can find me pretty easily there. You can email me, you know, first name dot. Last name ryanpoliniac at westerncomputercom. Or, you know, come through our website. We do have a chat. That, admittedly, the very first chat is about. Hey, brad, thanks for coming by, can we help you? But the second that you put something in the chat, you're going to get one of our sales team who are all seasoned pros and they'll be able to answer your questions and, and you know, guide you and be your Sherpa along this journey.

Speaker 1: 1:06:40

Absolutely. You do have a great sales team over there and a knowledgeable staff that can a team. I guess you could say that I can help someone guide them through the journey. Again, thank you for your time. We appreciate it and I look forward to getting hiking with you after your girls get older and they're done with their gymnastics career.

Speaker 3: 1:06:54

Well, we'll try to squeeze it in before. Yeah, absolutely, thank you again, thanks guys.

Speaker 2: 1:06:58

I look forward to seeing you soon. Thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:07:01

Thank you, Chris, for your time for another episode of In the Dynamics Corner Chair.

Speaker 2: 1:07:16

And thank you to our guests for participating. Thank you, brad, for your time. It is a wonderful episode of Dynamics Corner Chair. I would also like to thank our guests for joining us. Thank you for all of our listeners tuning in as well. You can find Brad at developerlifecom, that is D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E dot com, and you can interact with them via Twitter D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E. You can also find me at Mattalinoio, m-a-t-a-l-i-n-o dot I-O, and my Twitter handle is Mattalino16. And you can see those links down below in the show notes. Again, thank you everyone. Thank you and take care.