Introduction: This is the ERP Advisor. Today's episode, ERP Implementation Case Study Series, Construction and Field Service Companies.
Rebekah McCabe: Thank you, everyone, for joining us for today's webinar, ERP Implementation Case Study Series, Construction and Field Service Companies. Shawn Windle is our speaker for today. Shawn is the founder and managing principal of ERP Advisors Group, based in Denver, Colorado. Shawn has over 25 years of experience in the enterprise software industry, helping hundreds of clients across many industries with selecting and implementing a wide variety of enterprise solutions. His podcast, ERP Advisor, has dozens of episodes with thousands of downloads and is featured on prominent podcast platforms such as Apple and Spotify. On today's call, Shawn will continue our ERP implementation case study series by reviewing case studies for construction and field service companies to evaluate the best practices that help them reach a successful ERP go-live. Welcome, Shawn.
Shawn Windle: Thank you, Rebekah. And we really do have to say maybe Shawn and the team or the team and Shawn, or even just the team at ERP Advisors, because it's definitely everybody, including Will, who's back in the office with us, which is great.
Rebekah McCabe: Yes, Will is here. He's just hidden. He'll be handling all the back end stuff today. So that'll be really good. And I know you're in Florida. It looks pretty nice out there.
Shawn Windle: Yeah, here, I can show you real quick. It's hot, you know, beautiful buildings back there and it's hot. I don't know why we end up in Florida in the summertime, but you just kind of go with it sometimes. So anyway, here, Colorado is a little warmer too, but at least the weather's been decent. There's been so many weird things going on with like tornadoes with our clients and stuff. So things kind of calm down a little bit, but yeah.
Rebekah McCabe: It's been in the 90s out here. So all of us Coloradans who are not used to the heat are having a grand old time having to, I'm just trying to make sure my plants don't die. I know Erica understands that she has her plants, but they are suffocating outside sometimes. I have to check on them throughout the day, at least when I'm not in the office. So hey, you know I'm here.
Shawn Windle: That's right. That's good. That's good. There's plants in the office too. Oh, maybe you could check on mine. That'd be good. Okay.
Rebekah McCabe: Yes.
Shawn Windle: Perfect. Love it.
Rebekah McCabe: All right. Anyways, now we can kind of dive into this topic. I know that these construction field service companies, they kind of get grouped together pretty often because I think most people perceive them as very similar, similar companies with similar requirements. And so just to kick it off and to kind of create that distinction and some of the commonalities. They have really unique requirements and a lot in common that people just see when it comes to software. So Shawn, can you give us an overview of those commonalities?
Shawn Windle: Yeah, and it is pretty wild to me to see the incline. I mean, it's like hockey stick growth of construction companies, field services companies that are taking on new solutions in really probably the last six years. Economic trends drive a lot of construction for sure. Same for field services. And it's pretty wild. Like you really only used to hear about an application called Timberline years and years and years ago for software for construction businesses. And I'll just talk about construction first. And then there were other applications like Coins or definitely CMIC. There's Viewpoint and a whole bunch of others. that were Dexter Cheney, Dexter Cheney. Yeah, Dexter, Dexter. What did it used to be called? Not Dexter Cheney. I can't remember, but it's Dexter something. And they were kind of built for mid-size, maybe some were built for larger construction companies. JD Edwards and I was there back in the day, had a construction solution. And then I think what happened was margins went up in the construction business. I mean, that's the trend that I think we see, Rebekah, across a lot of our discussions on, wow, why are these industries buying more software right now? Well, because margins are bigger. So now instead of just investing in the next project or people or equipment, they're looking at enterprise software. Plus, there's the proliferation of enterprise software, plus there's Procore, and there's others that are very prevalent in the construction space. So that's been a big change. And on the field services side, I think it's very similar because field services businesses are very driven by people, of course, people in the field doing work, using tools and equipment and all the way from oil field services that requires daily reporting to utility services. We have several clients that provide different services in the energy sector, not just oil and gas, but also energy, like renewables and even coal generation plants in that energy generation or electric generation plants. And so as those businesses are sort of kind of maturing, the model is maturing, where do you get more margin? Well, through automation. So you have this sort of trifecta of economic events occurring where there's more demand for construction for field services. There's therefore a little more margin available to invest in the business. And as the business models are maturing, there's a need to drive additional profit out. So it's pretty, it's been actually great. We love working with construction field services companies. I mean, we like everybody we work with, fortunately. But they're great because their needs, like you said at the beginning here, are pretty unique. I can dive into more of that, but does that make sense at a high level, kind of, I mean, what you're seeing too, when you go to the conferences? What else would you add to that, Rebekah?
Rebekah McCabe: Yeah, I'm definitely, I'm definitely following and I agree with a lot of those trends. I think, I mean, construction's always been pretty prevalent and I know in Colorado. Construction is huge, and we know that. And the state flower is a traffic cone, because I feel like every time you go outside, that that's just what you see. And then we were even talking about this morning, that just the prevalence of field services, they've always been grouped under some other industry. You don't necessarily see a company coming to you and saying, like, we are just a field services company, which Makes sense, but now I think we're seeing it as more of a prevalent need and something that people are putting more at the forefront. Even with the software vendors when I'm going to conferences, they're really pushing their field services, tools and solutions, and they're acquiring these new things and trying to look deeper into how can we offer that. So that's kind of what I'm seeing in terms of that side of it. Construction is such an old industry. So like it's been around.
Shawn Windle: Thousands of years, really.
Rebekah McCabe: Thousands of years.
Shawn Windle: Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. I don't know how far back. It depends on how much of a conspiracy theorist you are. We watch Ancient Aliens, so it goes way back. Just kidding.
Rebekah McCabe: You never know. But yeah, and I mean, even lots of those solutions you're talking about, they predate me. They're older than I am. So it's interesting because lots of the vendors are just putting lots of investment R&D into those solutions. And they're really looking to see how can we improve it? How can we not only provide industry specific requirements or like functionality, but I mean, maybe there's a trend kind of going away from needing very industry specific functionality. I don't know that this industry is the same case. I think you need very industry specific capabilities, but that kind of does lead into our next question, which is why do construction companies and field service firms have such difficulty finding software to meet their needs?
Shawn Windle: No, another, it's a phenomenal question. Probably as a basis of that, the answer I'm about to give you, a lot of these firms, they haven't invested in technology for a long time. So they are running legacy apps that have been there and they work fairly well. But then as the company gets bigger, they do adjacent services. Something material changes in their customer base, the apps that they built, they outgrow them. And but unfortunately, along the way, they usually customize the crap out of them because usually, there's sometimes I'm thinking of three clients, including one of the guys who we have on our team now, was family of a leader in this in the construction field services business. And he's a really, really, really smart guy. So he's like, yeah, I can build that. I can build that. So you build all this custom stuff, right? And you've used it for 20 years. Like, okay, good. We're going to switch and we're just going to buy something. It'll be totally fine. You know, it's not because that new app hasn't been customized to the unique needs of an individual company. So that's really something that the listeners that are hopefully enjoying our podcast here and live event are really can take and really understand it took decades to build this solution that you have today. It's going to take a couple of years to get a new solution to the point where it can do what you're doing as well as better. But there's a whole bunch of stuff that you're not getting that you are going to get in a phase one, the first implementation with the software solution. So the golden nugget here, I'll do the ring the bell. The golden nugget, the first thing I'm going to put out here is you do have to set realistic expectations. The software vendors will not help you set those. They will sell you the solution and they need to sell you the solution. You need to be able to say, here's what I want. Here's everything that I want. Wow, that's a lot of stuff. Our solution can meet it all, or it can only do these parts, and we're going to have to bring in this best of breed or bolt on for that. That's good. But then the implementation people, or us, help clients to say, okay, phase one, minimum viable product. And that is so freaking important in this industry. And I think that the industry in general, both construction and field services understand this concept probably more than anybody, frankly. Which is when you're doing a first phase of software, don't do any more than you have to. Well, how do you define what you have to? I mean, my easy, simple little thumbnail check on that is, would you, as the individual asking for something that's not out-of-the-box, would you pay for it on your own? Like it's that important, right? If it's not, don't do it. We had a field services company, I think we'll talk about some of this here later too, that went all in, all best of breed apps, great vision, great execution team. And it was amazing, got started. And then all the focus went over to acquiring businesses, being acquired or whatever. And that vision for what should have been there was perfect. It was still the right thing, but the attention got dispersed. So as opposed to like, focus in on like, what can we really do here and get a win within, you know, six months within a short amount of time. and get up on the new app, get out of the new, get out of the old, get into the new, get used to the new, figure out what's really going on with the new. Yeah, that means you're going to do some workarounds for a while, but really get used to these applications. You know, you've got to be able to track your, I mean, for both of these industries, they're all about jobs and projects, right? And construction in progress, work in progress, or ticketing, service requests and assigning those and tracking labor, all costs, committed, all kinds of costs, committed costs, actual costs. What was the budgeted cost? You know, the requirements are pretty straightforward. Get that all in and then start worrying about how you're doing electronic document share because you may, you're probably already doing that today and it's probably going to leave it where it is or, worry about, kind of intra or intercompany workflow and, but the construction industry, even bringing in information, there's so much opportunity with technology, it just blows your mind, bless you, that if we can, yeah, if we can get a framework in place, then you can enjoy all those, the fruits of the labor later, but just get the framework in first.
Rebekah McCabe: Yeah. And I think too, the expectations tend to skyrocket, right? When all of a sudden, oh, we're going to get acquired. Oh, this is the, and the focus starts to go somewhere else. But once you come back, you're like, well, maybe this isn't right. No, it's still right. This is still the right plan. But then people are thinking with, well, we need to look attractive to the acquisition. We need to be thinking about this. We need to be thinking about this. So like reining it back in people. There's always, that's always a huge factor in these implementations. So before we dive into these clients that you keep kind of alluding to, what should a construction company or field services firm be wary of during their implementation?
Shawn Windle: I think there's three things and these are very specific to, again, construction field services as very people intensive industries, right? We're relying on a lot of people and usually equipment too. So the first thing is definitely like, and I kind of said this right, but be realistic with your goals, but it's also not just of the software, but of your people. What are your people really capable of? We've had some companies, we're not even set to talk about these guys today, but we've had some specialty contractors that They're so freaking busy that we know that go live is user acceptance test. There's no way that the teams can spend time testing because they're just so busy and they're usually pretty light staffed on the administrative side, which again is a huge commonality across a lot of our, it's sort of energy construction, you know, it's sort of natural resource sort of related building and servicing industries is that admin is light. they're putting money into the next project or the next machine or the next, group of people or the next acquisition. They're not putting it into back office staff. So now remember, and I mean, I still can't believe I have to say this. I am just like befuddled. I just wanted to say that word as to how people don't understand the responsibility that a company has on the implementation. They still think they're hiring, I don't know, a specialty contractor who's going to come in and take care of everything for them. Wait, Shawn, isn't that what we're hiring? Yes, but who's going to tell them what to build? Oh, I'm paying them to tell me. Yeah, but there could be three different ways of doing it. Who's going to tell them which one? who's going to actually train your individual people? Because you don't want these software people training your people because they don't speak to your people speak. You know, there's every phase of the project you can look at with a clean eye and say, oh, documentation. Well, the implementation partner is going to build a documentation of what? of this software. Oh, well, the software vendor is going to build that. Yeah, there may be some. There better be some. It's probably online. Most of these vendors, even in their contracts, say, you know, we're going to deliver functionality that meets what we describe in the help menus online. So if you want a little how-to sitting next to somebody's desk or you've got a foreman out in the field that's trying to figure something out, they're on their own, right? Unless you build something or you have some kind of support for these people. Back in the day when I was with the Big Four, I mean, we would do everything for clients, and maybe that's why projects were in the 10s of millions. But these projects aren't in the 10s of millions. So you have to sort of be ready for the amount of activity that your people are going to have to do as part of the project. And we've got some guidelines and stuff online. I think we've even got that implementation guide on the website that sort of talks to that too. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, you know, the pricing models for these software projects or field services and construction can be interesting. Some of the software vendors have pricing that's based off of things like your revenue. or the size of projects that you do. We have one client that's in multi-billion dollar projects, but they're actually only 100 million in revenue. Well, they would have had to pay for the multi-billion dollar projects that they run, but they don't make that much revenue from because they're really high up in it. So you got to watch the software costing models and the pricing. It's not very clear. I'd say the other thing to look out for, especially on the field services side, is It's very easy to get enamored by, AI-driven UI sort of like next generation stuff for your field services people to make their lives easier. I love that, right? But there's a difference between geo-tracking, which, you know, if somebody's entering time on their phone, some apps can look at the phone and say, well, where's this person at? Oh, they're probably on this project. pull the project up and then say to the person, is this the project you want to put your time on or the job that you want to put your time on? Oh, yes, that's great. That's amazing, right? But going deeper into things like, you know, optimizing who should be at what job or, you know, what's all the history, based on the history of this particular client or this particular asset that we're servicing, what is going to be the preventative maintenance that we need to look at three years from now? there's a lot of problems that are trying to be solved that aren't, we're just not there yet. but using AI for PM is a great idea because you get, the service tech shows up in an asset. It could be an oil rig or well that's in the middle of nowhere. It could be a plant that they have to trim trees and keep the area clean and clear of the wires, the overhead. It could be plumbing, it could be heating, electric, HVAC. We've got them all. We've worked with everybody. The ability to be on the site and the phone, the app says to you, okay, you're doing this, but they haven't had not just the maintenance, but they're, typically the turbine fails at, 70,000 man hours of work and they're at 75,000. So check the turbine while you're there. Oh, okay, cool. They go and check the turbine and it's like, we're ready to break. my God, customer, if we get this replaced now, it's going to save you like $300,000 versus it goes down and your midstream oil processing facility stops as you're taking different gases and things and creating new outputs because this piece of equipment failed. But if had we known that there was a possibility it would fail, we got on top of it sooner, right? Out of that stuff. There's no doubt all of the top vendors in field services for sure are going in that direction. They're not probably quite there, I would say, but you do need to talk to the vendors and see what their strategies are in this area to make sure that there's a roadmap for it. So don't just buy on the hype. You got to get the basics. But there is a little bit of like, hey, these guys are investing in the future and you want that. It could really it could change your customer's life. And then you've got a customer for life after that kind of stuff.
Rebekah McCabe: Definitely. And I think I read a lot about AI, I read a lot about technology, and we still are in a retrieval phase. That's what I keep telling people. It needs the data there to actually do something with it, but it's still missing that human element where I can go in and see the context of it. And maybe I understand, even like with people, AI is not going to understand people. And at the end of the day, nobody understands your business like you understand your business, including AI, even when they have access to all of that data. And going back to your first point, I just think people don't realize how much input they have to give, even when they have advisors like us on board. But it does help when we're there for the needs analysis selection because we have deep insight into their business.
Shawn Windle: But it is, it's pretty cool. I mean, well, we were at one of the software conferences and it was like people were bringing up AI in every meeting and it was literally was like, you're bringing it up, how like cheesy it is, but you're still doing it. Like, what in the world is this? It was so strange, wasn't it? That was so funny. Like, oh, I shouldn't be talking about AI, but blah, blah, blah, but I'm going to. But I mean, we're really talking about, especially for construction and field services, there's so many, transactions, like it's exactly what you said. You have to have the data set there, right? And then the solutions that we're recommending to our clients, they are, they're the bathtubs that just fill up with all this data, right? This is why we've talked about before. Again, another tip to everybody listening to this, you've got to find out what your software vendor is doing with their hyperscaler, their data center. Because like we're doing, we're going to hopefully close it like today, a contract with a large construction management system. And they work with a very specific hyperscaler. And you could tell that it was just, the discussion was disjointed between the software vendor and the hyperscaler. And you can't do that. Like these software vendors have to have a joint conversation because the tools that the hyperscalers, it's a fancy word for data centers, The data centers have so much data manipulation and storage capabilities that the ERP vendors don't. ERP vendors write logic that you put in a piece of information, but the logic runs, a new piece of information runs out. It's called transaction processing, right? All that data goes into the database. And if the hyperscaler has tools that can analyze the data quickly, can, you know, pull together, summarize, do all these sort of like just data manipulation quickly, Now, the ERP vendors, the construction management vendors, the field service automation vendors, they have the business logic. They are the ones that know if, again, there's a preventative maintenance schedule. We did the work back here, back here, back here, but we didn't do it there. Now, spit that report over to somebody in customer service who gets on the phone and calls the customer and says, hey, we don't have record of you getting this done right now. I mean, I don't know about you, but I get that. I've got a couple of cars and I get all these stupid like emails. Hey, you know, what is it? Carfax, Autofax, some EIEIO fax. Somebody sends an e-mail, says, oh, it's time for your car to get it. I'm like, I just don't drive it that much. So I know what just an e-mail automation. I'd love it for somebody to call me and say, you know, a car maintenance is totally different thing. Because if it goes down, Anyway, we're talking machines that are running multi-billion dollar processes that when they're down, people's jobs are going to get, they're going to get fired because there's multiple people and statistical process controls over all these things to make sure they don't happen. So long story short, it is important to look at the AI strategy from your construction management and your field services. Do you really care? No. Just make sure though that they're doing something. I'll stop talking.
Rebekah McCabe: Great. Yes. Don't get caught in the hoopla. As someone who is in marketing, I see it all the time. I mean, we have to play that game. Everybody has to play that game. But look for the transparency. And I can't tell people that enough. And you and I talk about that all the time. The people who are going to be honest with you, and it's not all just fluff, like this is what we're doing. Those are what you want to look for. Those are the partners that you want to look for.
Shawn Windle: And you know, to that point, Rebekah, I have to do a shout out because I felt like Sage Intacct. Of all the conferences that I went to, I think they did a really good job of talking about their copilot. Sounds familiar for an AI job. They did a really nice job of just saying, hey, here's the simplicity of how it helps a person. We don't want to replace all the humans and replace them with bots. No, it's like, let's help people to do their jobs better, do it faster, quicker, et cetera. And that really came through. And they've got some interesting construction things. I think we've even probably done some webinars and stuff on their solutions. They're investing more in that field because they're, you know, they're a good place for that. But there's other construction management type apps too. But You're right. Look for practical. I think that's a good way to say it.
Rebekah McCabe: Definitely. So, I mean, this is a field or a case study series. So now we get to actually dive into the clients that you've been alluding to this entire time. So we're going to talk a little bit about how our own clients navigated lots of these things that you were just talking about. The first one is a thousand plus person field service company. They were fairly sophisticated, unfairly sophisticated legacy applications. And They had a pretty sophisticated management team, but a more straightforward end users that were just ready to be able to use the application right out-of-the-box. So their original, they wanted the system engineered for end users. Let's talk a little bit about that company. What did you see from them?
Shawn Windle: It was definitely, it was good. Again, another nugget for people on the call. A secret maybe, secrets from ERP advisors. We have to look at what technology you're on today to figure out what's the appropriate gradient for the future. So is it best to breed? Is it all-in-one? Is it hybrid? Is it cloud? Is it a platform as a service? Is it just a single instance in the cloud? Is it on-prem, right? A lot of that is driven by where you're at today. And this particular client, they had taken some okay, technology. Actually, they had one system that was more advanced and they customized a lot of it. And then they bought another business that was similar that had some fairly sophisticated applications as well, brought those together. And that was a pretty good fit. They didn't really integrate those. You know, it's sort of those 1 + 1 = 3. They instead decided to go to a whole new app. leveraging the sophistication of both sides to go into the new one, plus a platform for more acquisitions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it was a lot. It just took a lot. And the risk that we have with our clients, with this client in particular is, man, they got busy, really super busy. This is the one I was alluding to earlier. Ultimately, they did get, they got bought. And then they were sold. Actually, we engaged with them after they were bought, but then they were going through a sales transaction and then sort of put the project on hold and now they're going to get bought. We're trying to figure out what they're going to do with all that stuff now because we're encumbered with these five-year contracts, right? So, I mean, that's the other nugget I can throw out here is, you know, you think you want price protection, so you get in a long-term contract. Guys, that might not be the right answer. I mean, some of the vendors today, we're not going to name any names, are definitely jacking up the prices on the renewals. It's true, but normally when we do those analyses, unless there's major feature functionality gaps, you still should just stick with it because it's not just too expensive to change. It's that the application, after you've used it for a long time, it's saving you costs. People, real people that you would have to hire to automate what's going on there. So it's sometimes it's better to go a little shorter contract just so you know that you can get out of it if something changes, right? And then this world of construction and field services businesses, there's just so much M&A and divestitures and all that stuff. So that's one that came up there. And then the other thing I would say for these guys is we, the focus needed to stay on the end users, the field users. And we sort of kind of focused on mid-level people that were a little more, they came from kind of more sophisticated, bigger companies, frankly. And I think at the end of the day, when I look back at it, I don't know if we really answered the question of what's it like for the people in the field? Are we going to make their life better? So that, especially for field services, I mean, construction is a little bit different. And it depends, lots of times it's managers that are actually in the field that interact with the system. It's not necessarily the techs themselves, but a lot of companies that is the tech, right? We have a field services company we're working with right now, and it's always the techs, right? But they've got some third parties too, but then they interact with the system. So, you know, you got to sort of understand who you're really building the system for. Is it for management to get great reports? Okay, but that's an outcome, right? That happens later. You've got to get all the inputs as easy as possible, as straightforward as possible. The processing in the middle level people, you want that to be clear, right? Then the reports are simple. You know, you have to kind of work your way back. So anyway, those are some lessons I think we learned on that, Glenn.
Rebekah McCabe: Yeah, definitely. And you're not going to get good reports if people can't enter the data because you put them on something too complicated. And kind of to that point, I've seen, I'm at that age where I have friends that are techs, they're out in the field. And some of them are just like, just give me an iPad. I have to write down what I'm doing sometimes and take it back. And then I have to get onto a computer and enter all of the data and see in order to like put in the system. And then maybe I forget something. And so these companies, these end users are not as far along as everybody thinks they are. And not that they couldn't figure it out. But it's more these companies like you, like we've been talking about, have been around for years and years and years and years and years. And we, it's so easy to get caught up in like, well, the world's moving so fast, they have to be doing all of this. Yeah. Well, no, our legacy meme series, there are people still using systems that would be comparable to like a VHS tape. And most of us aren't going to go home and watch a VHS. We just want to be on something good. Like, I just need to get a blue right now. Like, I need to get off of whatever else I'm going to get on before I try to buy an Apple TV and figure that out.
Shawn Windle: There you go. That's a great gradient. That's meme, meme, well, meme.
Rebekah McCabe: Meme. There we go. I think you tied that one up really well. So I would like to dive into the next client that we had, which was they needed a, they had kind of an all-in-one solution, I believe. To me, many different business processes, which is kind of the trend from lots of those companies. They needed projects, construction jobs and services to really fix things and get the business on track for where they were going. So can you dive a little bit into that? And I can bring up some more points as we go.
Shawn Windle: Yeah, it's a great scenario for a construction company that very, very, very often this is what happens where they're known for a specialty service, right? Whatever, installation of HVACs, or in this case is electrical, all of the disciplines of construction of subcontracting, all the exact same plumbing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What ends up happening is they end up starting a services branch. So, and it's not just go out after the job and, do the blue tape and fix all this stuff. It's actually ongoing service. It's not just the warranty and maintenance, but it's ongoing maintenance. And those can be quite lucrative contracts too, especially if you have, you know, larger customers like retailers that need different systems in their buildings serviced on a frequent basis. It could be elevators, it could be, HVAC machines, whatever it is, right? Much less industrial companies that have equipment too that need to get serviced. So there's this blend that this company had between really trying to get the job of the construction job correct, managing cost, again, expected budgets, actuals, really maintaining that monitoring of the job with material, because material is kind of interesting. I think most of the people that are listening to this in the industry, they know they're not really, it's a pass-through cost for material usually, they're buying it for the job. But there is usually some inventory and you do want to use up inventory. And so the inventory side for a construction company can get interesting. And these guys happen to have a lot of inventory too. So we sort of had to step back and say, all right, do we go a best of breed and more of a kind of ERP that's more of an all-in-one or something in between? And we actually ended up more on the best of breed side and then did bring in some field service bolt-ons so that we could handle dispatch and service requests, service tickets and that. That was different than the construction world. It's like two different minds build construction versus services, field services. So, but there's some great apps. I mean, IFS is one of them, maybe SAP at the top end for sure, but you know, they can kind of do both as well. But usually you see there's a little bit of like, which one do they do really well? And the other one's like, okay. So we went with the construction management system and then brought in a breast of breed that had an integration. for field services. Actually, we're going to do it again for another client that's coming up here. And it worked out pretty good, right? Now they have a platform. Now everybody's on the same project, but are on the same system. But again, they were on old software, and it was a big jump for them because they went from an old version of GP to a bigger construction management system. But the company had grown significantly and there was a lot of future growth there too. And so another nugget, right? Of course, I mean, these are obvious things, but sometimes when you, it takes somebody like us to say these for you to be like, I know that's true. I didn't realize I knew that was true. Yes, you knew it was true. You gotta, you're buying the system for the future, not just for today. You're implementing for six to 12 months out, but you're buying the system for hopefully, knock on wood, my dogs don't bark, 10 years. and what's going to happen in a 10-year time frame. So that's sort of why we took that client from pretty rudimentary software to industry best of breed with some bolt-ons. So very much a best of breed environment so that they can meet their needs for the duration.
Rebekah McCabe: Yeah, definitely. And you and I talked about kind of a unique piece to this project, which I believe they were vetting a solution that was cloud-based kind of early in their cloud adoption. I'm not sure if that's exactly what they went with, but you had said something pretty interesting about just because a tool has been around for a while doesn't mean it's necessarily matured. So how did that show up in this implementation?
Shawn Windle: No, that's exactly right. When we were doing this particular project, the app, which is very well known, I'm not going to use their name, was still getting burnt in as a cloud solution. and not just with the actual offering, which was solid, that's why we selected it, but also the contracts and several other things. So, especially in this construction management field services, even in like field services, like Maximo's been around forever, forever, right? It's like the, it's like the OG of field services apps because it is the OG. And it's been around for probably 40, 50 years. So, and I'm not saying that's the one in this other instance, but these apps have been here for a long time, and it is just a different mindset with a cloud deployment. So you really, you need to do the diligence. I mean, we have one client right now with one construction management system that basically had to bypass the software vendor and go to the hyperscaler to find out very specific information about the IT ecosystem that sits behind the app because the vendor didn't even know. They had no idea. So, you know, it is a space where either have legacy applications that are evolving their tech platforms, or you have some new apps that are coming in that maybe come in on more of a modern platform, but their functionality is not as deep. So there's a little bit of trade-off that you have to look at there for sure.
Rebekah McCabe: Yeah, and that's definitely why it stuck out to me was I think people look for shiny new, same with the AI thing, and they don't necessarily consider, well, this product might be a little bit newer to the cloud, but it's actually going to do what we need it to do today. So maybe that's the right solution for us, whereas others might be more willing to ride the ride the river down until they finally like get what they need out of the system. So what were some of the main issues, challenges that they confronted during their implementation?
Shawn Windle: Oh, man. Let's see. I think I have seventeen points that I'm going to mention: Data, data, data, data, data, data, data, data, data, data, data, data, data, data, and data. Oh, my gosh, yeah, that was a crazy project, because you know, you've got you've got all of the it's got everything, you know, from you know, projects, in-flight projects, different levels of data and projects, how much was billed, how much is committed, how much is Actually, whatever, there's so many different balances that have to be brought over when you have a lot of projects, right? So that got pretty tricky for sure. And then again, sort of depending on these different solutions, their data migration just might be tough because it's complex data. It goes in layers and you got to get the first layer right, then the second one, then the third and the 4th and the 5th. And then the other thing I will say, nugget, nugget, nugget, is our client didn't really clean their data before the project. So that's the other thing that happens is you do these projects and you're like, oh, this will be great. Let's go. Oh, well, you know, you've got like 13,000 projects in the system. You're really only working on 5,000. So what are the other A? Oh, they're just, we should just close them. Who's we? Because take that W and turn it upside down, right? Go clean those, just kill them, because otherwise you're going to bring all this junk data over. I mean, again, these are obvious points, but especially in construction, I don't even say field services, because maybe the transgressions of the past with our data, they will like whoop in the present time moment, you will be the effect of them unless you clean them up. Same thing with customers, vendors, no different than our other industries, but especially with these, the project data is very complex to bring over because you have to have a project in the system. Oh, wait, you actually have to have a customer first. Okay, well, what's before a customer? Oh, there's types of customers that have to be set up. And then there's other configuration to set up the customer type to set up the customer to get the project in. And then you need to have financial information in and it's just it just goes crazy. So again, the nugget is clean your data, clean your data, clean your data before you start spending money on new software because it's like getting in a taxi cab and like, okay, taxi, stay here. I'm going to go run across the street for 30 minutes and get a coffee and eat and everything else and sort of get ready for my ride, but stay there and I'll pay. Maybe sometimes you do that because you want to make sure it's there. But, you know, don't do that with software. You don't have to.
Rebekah McCabe: Don't do that. Yes. So kind of data that kind of leads into like the legacy discussion. You're leaving those behind for a myriad of reasons. This next last client that we're going to talk about, they are on a very very common construction application, very big one. We're kind of in the era of end of life for lots of these legacy applications. They were fast growing, family owned and operated construction and field services firm. Coming off of that product, they were on their way to a billion in revenue. They were growing very quickly and they needed to scale the business at the right pace. So let's dive into what they, what were they really looking for going into their ERP selection?
Shawn Windle: Very interesting selection because we did look at a more horizontal solution, something, well, I'll just say it, like Microsoft Finance and Operations. And in that particular application ecosystem, there's vendors that focus on different industries. So we found the top vendor for construction and field services with F&O, it's called Finance and Operations. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. And it was a very interesting solution because of this growth isn't just in what they do today. Like most of these sort of companies, they might do a specific service today, but then they usually are buying adjacent businesses. It could even be manufacturers. It could be process manufacturers. Like if the company does outside services on plants, maybe they want to buy a company that actually makes the chemicals that they're spraying on for whatever reason, right? So now you have a process manufacturer that's part of your ecosystem and do you want to roll your software out across them or not? There's a whole nother discussion around just leave them on the best of breed or put them on the platform. But the idea was we should look at a platform solution for all these businesses. Or industry specific, right? Again, more around construction management and field services. So when we really dug in, I think either app would have worked really well for both of these companies, but we go back to this reality of the resources that are available to help on the implementation on the client side. And man, we just kept looking and looking and looking for people that would make sense to sort of elevate out of their day job, maybe backfill, and then these people are focused on the projects. And we found a few, but we didn't find enough to make a horizontal ERP work. We really needed a vendor who could come in and say, okay, like we'll walk you through how this works. You tell us what's different and we're done. Because we do this a gazillion times, right? And we feel like we can get a win with that. It's going to be hard enough to do that. So, you know, it goes back to the things I've already mentioned about the people. What are the people capable of? When it comes to supporting the implementation. You don't, it's just not like going to a restaurant where you sit there with your hands back and all the food shows up. You got to go back to the kitchen and because the cook's got a million questions to ask you and you got to answer them. Someone's got to be smart enough about what's needed in the software to answer those questions. Those are usually the people that are busiest and the most valuable to the company, you know? And then it also goes back to the kind of functionality and automation that you're looking for. And the closer it fits to your business, usually the better. But again, sometimes maybe it's not so good, but it does a broader functionality. And for the future, that makes some sense. And I think ultimately what we saw with these guys was because of the growth, we could not have them tied up in any kind of extra complexities in the ERP implementation. They're so busy with acquisitions and with the next business and everything else that it was just sort of like, all right, we're going to take an app that really fits this area that they work in. And then, when we acquire that chemicals company, we might just leave them on what they're on and just suck up a trial balance because we kind of don't need all that access into their operational data. We'll do that through, a data lake or something else like that or through a click or another app like that. So, those are just some of the considerations. And I mean, and I love being able to talk about this with people that are going through this because guys, this is going to be your fricking life. I don't envy you, but I will tell you this, I'm with you. There are other clients, like, this is what we do, you know? And so you can get through these things, but you have to think about these considerations. And I think, like, just to wrap up on this last company, we knew it was the right decision. They knew, and the software vendor knew too, right? It's like this, it's like perfect. It's like the cake is like, bing, it's done, and it's done. Then you go on to implementation, which is really hard.
Rebekah McCabe: Right. It's all about MVP. Always, always. That's what it's about.
Shawn Windle: It really is. I wish Erica would take that from me. Honey, I just expect MVP out of me. The minimum viable product and we're set.
Rebekah McCabe: Hey, it's good. She drives growth. She drives higher expectations. You get better and better.
Shawn Windle: I'm telling you. That's what we want. You know, we're both, she's both our boss.
Rebekah McCabe: Yes, she is.
Shawn Windle: That's great. I love that game.
Rebekah McCabe: Yes, things wouldn't get done if everybody was in every instance looking for minimum viable product.
Shawn Windle: I think it's true. I think it's true. But it is, it is. And I mean, it's kind of funny, but it actually is true that even with what we do and with our, we just closed an implementation helping a client today, which is a great, love these guys, and we're helping them at the minimum viable level to start because we're going to do it. So that MVP is really, to not take that concept into an implementation is absolutely, don't even expect anything other than a nightmare. Because you will get it. You do have to do MVP in a shorter cycle to get the win, to demonstrate to the company the value of what you just did. But also know then, don't make the mistake, oh God, we're done. Thank God, I'm going to take a bunch of time off. Take the time off, that's fine. But then know coming back into it that there's going to be a phase two where you're going to get all the things you really wanted. But that phase one MVP, you set the stage for the future for the next decade.
Rebekah McCabe: Yeah. We're going to get everybody MVP shirts.
Shawn Windle: I love it. Instead of no customization to make it say MVP. And then on the back, you can customize if you pay for it.
Rebekah McCabe: Yeah. Or I'm just doing my best.
Shawn Windle: I'm just doing my best. Exactly. Sounds like my best.
Rebekah McCabe: I mean the bare minimum. We're just going to get this project done.
Shawn Windle: I have like a bear, like the bear at the convention center in Denver, the blue one.
Rebekah McCabe: Looking in the window. Yes. Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Shawn. I think we packed this call full of lots of information as always. I think these have this case study has been super valuable to a lot of people. So thank you so much as always.
Shawn Windle: Thank you too, Rebekah. I love your questions and thanks for, you know, making these calls happening and getting the data out because I mean, at the end of the day, we just want to help people with this. So hopefully that's what we accomplished.
Rebekah McCabe: Yeah, definitely. And thank you, everyone on this call. Thank you again for joining us today. Please let us know if we can answer any questions that you may have. As always, you can reach out to me or Shawn or another member of our team, and we'll get you connected to the right people. Be sure to join us for our next webinar, which is scheduled for Thursday, June 20th, and that's going to be knowing when to upgrade from your legacy ERP, where Shawn will confront the benefits and pitfalls of replacing legacy ERP systems. This event is eligible for a free CPE credit, so I would definitely reserve your spot today. Please go to our website, erpadvisorsgroup.com, for more details, learning objectives, and to register. ERP Advisors Group is one of the country's top independent enterprise software advisory firms. ERP Advisors Group advises mid- to large-sized businesses on selecting and implementing business applications, from enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, human capital management, business intelligence, and other enterprise applications, which equate to millions of dollars in software deals each year across many industries. This has been the ERP Advisor. Thank you again for joining. Thanks, everybody.
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