Send us Fan Mail When it comes to the needs of large enterprises with more than $1B in revenue, there are only a few solutions that can meet their needs. These solutions have extremely deep capabilities with their localization and globalization. But they are equally deep in their supply chain planning, transportation management, warehouse management, and project accounting. While most people think of Oracle or SAP as the only potential solution for large companies, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance...
May 19, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 318
Send us Fan Mail Building a test plan is hard. Executing is even harder. And if you are building a test plan for ERP implementation, you have added challenges. The testing challenges are unique with ERP implementation because the users don't have as much experience with the software development life cycle. They struggle with thinking like a tester where you need to plan for the edge and boundary cases. And ensure that you are not going to find any surprises post your go-live. But how to build a ...
May 18, 2022•59 min•Ep. 317
Send us Fan Mail eCommerce business models have grown in complexity exponentially. The channels such as Amazon and Walmart are always modifying their rules and business models. And it's hard for eCommerce brands to keep up with these regulations and have KPIs aligned with the changed regulations. If they are not aligned and measured, the brands may experience significant financial consequences. But most of these eCommerce platforms are targeted at a specific audience that might be on QuickBooks ...
May 17, 2022•58 min•Ep. 316
Send us Fan Mail While you might feel that most distribution businesses might be alike, it's not the case. It is especially tricky in industries such as oil and gas due to their compliance requirements and unique quality processes. These companies also go through specific ISO processes that are different from other industries and require you to have unique process arrangements in place to be able to meet them. Finally, each large Oil and Gas OEM may have its standards for the certificate of conf...
May 16, 2022•48 min•Ep. 315
Send us Fan Mail If you ask anyone their opinion about an ERP system, they will tell you that it's a system designed from the perspective of a CFO. Well, this might be partially true. But most CFOs would disagree with it. As they would not relate with these systems just like you. But there are a few systems that take that CFO perspective to the next level. Their perspective includes the ability to dissect data across multiple dimensions, easy financial report writing, and consolidation and elimi...
May 12, 2022•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 314
Send us Fan Mail If you have multiple subsidiaries, consolidating them could be a very involved process if you don't have an ERP system that natively supports multi-entity functionality. Your process might start with recording intercompany loans and interest earned through your subsidiaries. Then you might need to allocate the corporate overheads and account payables to various subsidiaries. Then you need to complete adjusting entries, followed by closing subsidiary books and then finally closin...
May 11, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 313
Send us Fan Mail How would you feel if you walked into a store and the product you wanted wasn't available? What could you do as a customer service rep if you had this customer at your store? The sales rep in you might be tempted to swipe the credit card. But if you can't deliver on your promises, this transaction may fire back in ways you wouldn't expect. This is where the newer eCommerce architecture allows you to explore scenarios such as buy-online-pick-up-at-store or buy-in-store-ship-to-cu...
May 10, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 312
Send us Fan Mail How difficult could the payment process through a POS be? You will probably take it for granted. If you can swipe a credit card in North America, why would be it be a problem in dealing with credit cards from the rest of the world? Well, when it comes to the financial processes internationally, each country has its own banking system and payment gateways. Selecting an eCommerce without thinking through the financial processes of that country might fire back. In today's episode, ...
May 09, 2022•47 min•Ep. 311
Send us Fan Mail One thing is the most consistent about ERP systems is that you will always find surprises. And that is even true for systems that may be well-liked or rated. Also, it doesn't matter how versatile a solution could be. Their design would make them a natural fit only for certain industries. If you make assumptions about any ERP systems, it's likely to fire back. You might think that systems as well adopted as NetSuite may not have limitations and might work for most industries. Wel...
May 05, 2022•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 310
Send us Fan Mail There are various ways of creating a financial budget. In fact, the key to budgetary planning is not to spend time getting 99% accuracy with your budget. It's the monitoring of the budget that matters more. So that you can take appropriate actions based on how far off you are from your budget. Budget planning is even more critical for industries with large amounts of inventory, heavy capital equipment, and human resources-driven industries. The budget planning could even vary ac...
May 04, 2022•58 min•Ep. 309
Send us Fan Mail Social media offers one of the biggest opportunities for eCommerce companies. The opportunity could include starting from influencer marketing to targeting ads on social media. Yet not many companies truly understand how to take advantage of social media. The company that really understand the nuances of each platform are crushing with their numbers, whether you talk about LinkedIn Influencers or TikTok. Also, the companies such as Twitter have been trying to figure out how they...
May 03, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 308
Send us Fan Mail Each industry has its own unique supply chain challenges, irrespective of whether you are in the manufacturing industry or construction. In the case of construction, you have a long sales cycle and demanding projects where you need to make sure you have suppliers lined up as soon as the project closes. The supply chain disruptions might result in delays with your projects, lost relationships with other business partners, and cash flow issues. In today's episode, our guest, Bahad...
May 02, 2022•47 min•Ep. 307
Send us Fan Mail The best-run companies use SAP S/4 HANA. The platform really lives to its name with its depth in transactions, deep workflow and auditing capabilities, and most robust planning and forecasting capabilities. But, in general, it is also the most hated vendor and platform. But why is that? It's primarily because of the misunderstanding of the purpose of the SAP S/4 HANA platform. It is also the most hated by companies that want to use ERP as the glorified database and have minimal ...
Apr 29, 2022•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 306
Send us Fan Mail ERP vendors and resellers race in a competition that no one will ever win. It's the TIME required to implement ERP software. Most vendors will oversell how quick and easy their software package is, some even claiming to implement as fast as a month. These claims are nothing but overstated. The most challenging part of an ERP implementation is to make critical business decisions and build consensus. Some executives might change their entire business model instantly without thinki...
Apr 28, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 305
Send us Fan Mail What do you buy as a consumer? Do you think you buy a product, brand, marketing hype, trust, confidence, or perception of being better, superior, healthy, wealthy, or smart? Well, one thing any marketer will tell you is that product is the least important of all, especially in the world of eCommerce, where you can't touch and feel the product before buying. This is the very reason why private label drop shipping exists. It's the exact product you could purchase anywhere else, bu...
Apr 27, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 304
Send us Fan Mail Most manufacturing companies are barely automated at the plant level. The premise of industry4.0 and specifically industry data ops is high. But it requires companies to have a centralized command and control, just like a supply chain control tower. The operational control tower will receive data from the plants and uncover operational efficiency synergies, whether you talk about energy consumption, predictive maintenance anomaly detection, or process bottlenecks. But what is th...
Apr 26, 2022•45 min•Ep. 303
Send us Fan Mail Supply chain is hard to define as it's very cross-functional in nature. It starts with receiving goods from vendors at your dock. And then it finishes with how you ship your shipments to your carrier. While these two touchpoints may be completely isolated, looking at your supply chain in an integrated fashion could provide significant cost savings and streamline your processes. But it's easier said than done as multiple departments are involved in the process. And it's very hard...
Apr 25, 2022•50 min•Ep. 302
Send us Fan Mail The announcement about the end of life of an ERP system has fired back every single ERP vendor. Whether we talk about Oracle announcement for JD Edwards, SAP announcement of ECC, or Microsoft announcement of GP, the vendors that have a lot of solutions in their customer base without very strong communities can typically sunset their products very easily without much noise. But that is not possible when you are a vendor such as Microsoft. And you have one of the most adopted ERP ...
Apr 22, 2022•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 301
Send us Fan Mail Pricing and discounting will always be a religious debate in the organizations on who controls it. For pricing and discounts to work, you need your inventory and master data to be in order. Or the pricing strategies may fire back due to the inconsistent customer experience. Pricing and discounting are even trickier when multiple systems might be controlling master data and pricing and discounting. The multiple systems could be CRM, eCommerce, PIM, ERP, pricing software, etc. So ...
Apr 21, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 300
Send us Fan Mail For an eCommerce business, inventory is everything. If you don't have enough inventory, you might lose on opportunities. If you have too much, your cash may be locked with the inventory. If you are working with vendors, they will not work with you unless you are willing to work with their preferred minimum order quantity. But those MOQs must make sense for your business as well. In fact, MOQ will drive your sales and product bundling as well as you need to have enough margins an...
Apr 20, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 299
Send us Fan Mail Amazon could appear like a massive opportunity. But to be successful on Amazon, you need a comprehensive strategy starting from SKUs to pricing and to your fulfillment. While Amazon could come across as frightening due to confusing terms and business models, Amazon provides several opportunities for sellers at different levels, including taking care of your entire fulfillment process. So what do you need to know to create Amazon as a successful channel? In today's episode, our g...
Apr 19, 2022•52 min•Ep. 298
Send us Fan Mail The audit procedures require end-to-end traceability and visibility into your processes. While they might vary a bit across industries such as medical or aerospace, the fundamentals are still the same. They are the same in how you vet your suppliers, how you ensure that the due dates are accurate on your POs, and finally, how you deliver to your customers with consistency. So how do you ensure that you are not going to get any red flags during the audit process? In today's episo...
Apr 18, 2022•47 min•Ep. 297
Send us Fan Mail What is one thing do you know about Salesforce fans? Well, for one, they absolutely love the salesforce platform. Me included! The love is so intense that they will do anything and everything to remain on Salesforce. And why not? There is not a single CRM platform that comes close to matching the depth and object hierarchy while not being as limiting as the ERP systems? But how would you feel about running your entire business on Salesforce? Nice idea, right? Irrespective of whe...
Apr 15, 2022•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 296
Send us Fan Mail How much of an impact might UoM conversions have on an ERP implementation? Well, if you asked a seasoned guy who has been part of a large implementation, UoM conversions fire back pretty bad. In fact, at times, they could be a make or break for the ERP implementations. The UoM conversions not supported the way your business processes are structured could be the birth of ad-hoc and excel-based processes. So what are the pitfalls when it comes to UoMs? How to find the UoMs that wi...
Apr 14, 2022•49 min•Ep. 295
Send us Fan Mail Most businesses struggle with providing consistent pricing across channels. Even when we think of static pricing, the systems and departments are not connected in how they price the product. The accounting may set the cost standards. But sales and marketing might maintain the pricing completely separately in a siloed manner in eComm. The inconsistent pricing experience can come across as alarming for customers. If you charge too high, then you will be missing opportunities. If y...
Apr 13, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 294
Send us Fan Mail BOMs inside ERP systems are not designed to track specification data. If you have several variables associated with your BOMs, then you might need to track specifications separately. Even if you have PIM or PLM, you might still need the specification software as that can not only help in creating the product model faster, but it can centralize your specification data, especially if you might be using multiple systems in your architecture. The centralized specifications could als...
Apr 12, 2022•47 min•Ep. 293
Send us Fan Mail If your physical and digital inventory may not be aligned and you don't have KPIs to track your excess inventory and obsolescence, you might be carrying aging inventory, and you might not be aware of that. Also, while some of the inventory may appear aging, if that is the critical inventory for their machines or operations, there may be a chance that you may not have these parts when you need them the most. Planning for inventory excess and obsolescence is hard as you not only n...
Apr 11, 2022•51 min•Ep. 292
Send us Fan Mail The developer community often thinks that the problem associated with ERP complexity or costs is technical. Time after time, we have seen developers championing how concepts such as no-code or open source can solve problems of the ERP world. The problems associated with ERP failures are very rarely technical or product-related. The hardest problem in the ERP world is getting everyone in one room to discuss or agree on a decision. Now, if you might take a couple of days to make a...
Apr 08, 2022•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 291
Send us Fan Mail Unit economics is critically important for product-centric businesses. If you don't understand your true cost, you might be selling at a much higher price, which would mean that you might not be able to win against your competitors. Also, if you are selling at a lower price as you may be missing on some cost elements, you might be losing money or selling unprofitable products. Product costing has deeper implications on your finance, supply chain, and operations. It could especia...
Apr 07, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 290
Send us Fan Mail Most companies might start selling on the website without going through the structured thinking of enabling user experience and mapping customer journeys. They may also start coding without going through the design process and wireframing the ideas. Wireframing plays a vital communication tool to align the expectations and test if the design is aligned with the user's expectations. But how to start on the journey of wireframing? What do you need to have before starting on this j...
Apr 06, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 289
