Evaluating Your ERP Implementer & Integration Strategy — John Thomas & Scott Brickler (Episode 3)
The Integrate Intelligently Podcast — with John Thomas and Scott Brickler (CADTALK)
John Thomas, Head of Demand at CADTALK, sits down with CEO Scott Brickler to talk through what separates a good ERP implementer from a bad one, when to bring in integrations like CADTALK, and why the "crawl, walk, run" approach beats a big-bang implementation every time.
Speaker note: this one's a two-person conversation, so lines are attributed directly to John and Scott.
What a Good ERP Implementer Tells You (vs. What You Want)
John: Let's say you've made the decision on the ERP, or you think you know the ERP, but now you're evaluating the ERP consultant or implementer. What questions do you need to ask before you even get to the point of moving forward? What should a good ERP implementer in the manufacturing world be able to tell you and advise you on as you go through this process?
Scott: A lot of what a really good ERP implementer does is tell you what you need — not what you want. At the end of the day, you give them what they need, and a lot of times when people buy an ERP, they just try to use the same process they had before. The reason whole companies exist just to implement ERPs is that it isn't like plugging in an off-the-shelf SaaS app onto your existing process — it's a combination of best practices, process re-engineering, and software, all at once.
The best consultants identify when it makes sense to change your process, when it makes sense to leave things alone, and which parts the software needs to cover — then turn those dials in the right proportions to get you where you need to go. Without that guidance, you're in the dark: you either try to change everything at once, or you feel like you have to use every module you bought, and you end up turning the dials at the wrong ratios. A good implementer tells you: turn this one to five, this one to two, this one to three — you're good. Then over time, we adjust those dials.
When to Plan Your Integration Strategy
John: Let's go a little deeper and get practical. You've made the ERP selection, you feel good about your implementer, but your implementer is bringing in third parties or other integrations — like CADTALK — that you're considering. When do you plan that integration strategy? When's the best time to bring those in?
Scott: It helps to walk through a scenario, since everything else sounds conceptual. Say I'm your consultant and you tell me you want finite scheduling. I'll ask — how do your bills of materials look? Pretty good? How are your routings, your run times? You need those to be solid to actually get the benefit of finite scheduling.
Every decision gets made based on assumptions about your current reality at the time you make it. If your current reality is that everything's done manually, with one person handling it, you might reasonably decide not to do finite scheduling — because you're looking at the environment as it is. But if you factor in other changes to that environment — new tools, other technology — at the same decision point, you can land on a completely different outcome. Does that make sense?
John: Absolutely, yeah.
Scott: That's why earlier is better. You may still decide not to do it, based on cost, risk, and other factors — there's always risk in implementing something new. But at least you can model what it looks like with a different, more automated or more consistent environment, rather than assuming the environment stays static. You can't model that unless you first consider that the environment could look different in the future with different tools.
John: As you evaluate potential big process changes — we've talked about this on the podcast before — there's this idea that an ERP implementation needs to be one big-bang event: implement, go live, move forward. First, that's almost never actually how it goes. Second, it's probably not even a good idea. Third, taking the crawl-walk-run approach — which you'll hear us and other ERP implementers reference a lot — pays dividends going forward.
Scott: Exactly. If you have clarity on which parts matter, and what has to be true for those things to happen, that sets your order of operations for the whole ERP implementation. You might decide you really want vendor or supplier portals — that might be the actual constraint in your business. If scheduling isn't really your problem, then don't buy CADTALK — it's not going to move the needle, because it's not the limiting factor in your business.
But for most manufacturers, ERP drives from the bill of materials. The odds that BOM accuracy is a critical piece of whatever you want out of an ERP are very high. So maybe you delay something else, but if the BOM is critical, you address it — you always have room to improve things as you go, but you have to know which parts actually matter, and treat it as a priority list.
From Decision to Implementation: What to Expect
John: Let's keep walking this path — from evaluating the ERP, to the implementer, to the add-ins, and now you've made the decision to move forward. What does that process look like? What's the timeline, and what changes can you expect to encounter as you move through an ERP implementation and bring in an integration like CADTALK?
Scott: A lot of implementations start with what's called modeling — sometimes preceded by training, so you understand the new tool — then business process modeling: how would this process work with the new tool? You do the same exercise for CADTALK, make assumptions about what things will look like, and build a process around those decisions.
That process takes time — there's a lot of back-and-forth, a lot of context transferring between the company and the consultant. The more parties involved early, the easier that transfer tends to be, because everyone's on the same page. You're also making a lot of decisions along the way, and once those are locked in, your future optionality goes down.
We see this a lot: a customer implements finite scheduling, gets up and running, makes a bunch of decisions about how they structure their bills of materials — and only then brings in CADTALK, wanting a completely different structure than what they built. We can do it, but it's ugly, and there's a real cost to redoing that work. There's unfortunately no way around that process — you have to work through the variables and transfer context across everyone's minds so they understand what the future state looks like, and that takes time.
That's why we always recommend the crawl-walk-run approach rather than a big bang for any implementation — nail the parts that matter, get them stable, then stack improvements, rather than doing everything at once and increasing your odds of failure.
Case Study: PBC Linear's 20-Year Vision
John: One more thing before we get to key takeaways — if you're figuring this out yourself, there's a great example of crawl-walk-run on our website. Go to cadtalk.com, check out our case studies, and look for PBC Linear — an Infor and CADTALK user who's stacked additional tech over time. They didn't start out this way, but they had a vision that someone could go to their website, design or select a bearing product, make adjustments, hit submit, and have a job packet print on the shop floor ready to go. They've achieved that — but it wasn't overnight, it took a long time.
Chris Kennedy on our team did a great job with that case study — went out to their manufacturing group in Illinois, and they told their story well. The first thing you hear is Jonathan Schroeder from their team saying, "20 years ago, we had this vision." That really speaks to the idea of understanding where you're trying to go before you get there.
Why the Technical Part Isn't the Point
Scott: You start with the vision and work backwards — what has to be true for that vision to become real. As we wrap up, here's one of my takeaways, and I want to hear yours too: for someone like me — I'm not an engineer, I have a marketing background, I hear engineers and developers talk and I've learned not to let my eyes glaze over — integration can feel like a very technical, unattainable project.
But in the roughly 40 minutes we've talked today, we haven't touched anything super technical. It's all been business conversation — bigger-picture, not IT conversations about how to do the integration. My takeaway is that the technical part isn't really the point. That's why we have people who implement — they handle the technical side. It's more about you as a business asking: do we make this decision? Is this right for our business? That's the real takeaway for me.
John: It's the why. If you have a big enough why, the how becomes easy. That's the reason — why would we do this? I want a competitive advantage, I want my business to run better, I want to serve my customers better. That's the why, that's the vision. Then you work back from the why to what has to be true to make it happen — and that's where the technical stuff comes in.
Scott: Right. Those technical conversations will happen, but at the end of the day, the decision to move forward isn't hinging on the technical conversation — it's the business part, understanding what it can do for you, that actually drives the decision.
Wrapping Up
John: Absolutely. Scott, I really enjoyed this — walking through this journey and the bigger picture behind what we do. Before we wrap up, any final thoughts we haven't touched on?
Scott: No, I think we covered it well. I like that we elevated the conversation to the "why" instead of getting stuck on the microcosm of individual solutions. The market is smarter now — they understand more of the problem, and there's always a root cause behind why you're doing something. Getting to that why, and showing where it works, takes a little more cognitive effort to unpack, but that's really where all the value is.
John: Absolutely. If you're interested in learning more or figuring out whether this is a viable solution for you, visit cadtalk.com — there are resources there, including a way to book a discovery call, case studies, and demo videos to help you start evaluating this decision. Or, if you're already working with an ERP implementation partner, talk to them — chances are they're familiar with CADTALK too, since we work with a lot of implementation partners who can help you evaluate the solution and bring us in.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Integrate Intelligently podcast. For CADTALK CEO Scott Brickler, I'm John Thomas. We'll see you next time.
