The decision to change to a new software platform had been coming for a year or so. I've been with the company about two years now, and they knew they needed new software before I joined the team; however, they didn't know how to do it. The worry was that it was going to take a long time and that it would be too complicated.
Even shopping for new software seemed overwhelming, but ERP Advisors Group’s process helped us zero in on a plan to move towards a selection and get the project on schedule. EAG’s process really helped us a lot. I thought I knew a lot of the technical stuff about the way our company operated but having the ability to take what our process is, wrap modern vocabulary around it, and then communicate that to suppliers or software vendors was more difficult than we thought. Having EAG help us compile that information and help us communicate our needs to the potential vendors was very helpful.
Bringing in ERP Advisors Group also helped us filter through the sales meetings we would have had to evaluate had we done it on our own, which made great use of our time. EAG also helped ensure the meetings were guided by us, not by the vendors, which, I’ll tell you, helped us from being sold on the bells and whistles from the salespeople we encountered.
The system we had was an on-premises database server. We wrote our own reports and had a colleague that headed up our IT department who had a lot of knowledge about the way our old system worked. With this model, it took a lot of effort on his part to get reports done. We knew we needed to streamline our processes and because of that, we ended up selecting a cloud-based system that would allow us to be more current and efficient in our day-to-day work.
It was a huge help that ERP Advisors Group communicates regularly with others in the industry that we aren’t used to. That experience ensures that they know the vocabulary and the right questions to ask when working with the vendors and that helped us a lot.
Working with Curtis was great. He really became my partner throughout the project. He helped me manage the vendor and he also helped me manage people inside my company. Curtis worked the organizational aspects, allowing me to work on the people aspect. He was really good at keeping track of topics and issues, then bringing them up to help us create productive conflicts that would keep the process going and the project on track. Along with our team, Curtis helped lead the project and was there for advice along the way. He and I found the right complement to each other that really allowed not just for me to be successful but for the whole company to be successful.
When it came time for the data migration phase, we started with the traditional ERP Advisors Group method. Robert and Dave were doing all the heavy lifting and our team was giving the directions, but this quickly changed to where my team took the first chair position, getting direction from the EAG data team. I don’t think we fully understood what our new system requirements were for our data and how difficult it would be for our new system to accept our data. It wasn’t even about getting our data cleaned up to migrate, it was more about having enough data. We found that if we didn’t have enough data, it made our new system function improperly. Robert and Dave helped us work through this and get all our data up and running smoothly.
Our entire team, along with Curtis and the vendor, played an important part in our project. I think EAG did a great job and were a large, important part of our success.