The Integrate Intelligently Podcast — with Jeff Brickler, Scott Brickler (CADTALK), and Stephanie Clark (Elliott Clark Consulting)
Stephanie Clark of Elliott Clark Consulting joins Jeff Brickler and Scott Brickler to talk about what actually happens after go-live — the manual processes, data cleanup, and change management that mom-and-pop manufacturers face as they move off spreadsheets and QuickBooks and onto a real ERP system.
Speaker note: this transcript is pulled from a YouTube auto-caption export with no diarization. Stephanie's lines are clear from context; the two hosts' banter is labeled generically as "Host" since the raw text doesn't distinguish Jeff from Scott.
What Happens After Go-Live
Host: You can't do everything all at once, right? Especially these mom-and-pop shops moving from QuickBooks to a real ERP — even if the desire is there to standardize new processes, you can't consume it all at once. Humans just can't. So you've got to get up on the system. I hear it all the time in ERP: "we've got to go live, go live, get on the system." So where do you see the gaps after go-live? What's still manual? How do we build a culture of continuous improvement instead of just kicking the can down the road? Most companies' systems aren't connected — we see that all the time. What do you typically see that's still a gap?
Get the Foundation Right Before You Plan
Stephanie: I've even encouraged my clients to do a couple of things I'll share with you. One is planning. What I find is that diving right into a planning system — running MRP and that kind of thing — is a lot to take on if a company wasn't doing that before, particularly if they've had trouble with inventory accuracy or their bills of materials weren't as clean as they needed to be.
Get those things right first. Focus on making sure the team knows when to do inventory transactions, and spot-check your inventory to make sure your counts are accurate. Make sure your data is good and your BOMs are clean. Focus there first — we'll add planning later, once we're confident, because if your data is bad, planning just isn't going to work. And if you aren't keeping accurate inventory, planning isn't going to help you. Get that foundation in first.
The other piece we help with — for someone going from a paper system to something more sophisticated — is bills of materials. Everybody gets that: it's the components that go into the finished good. Routings are what really throw people, because that's new for them. I describe routings as the steps you're going to go through to produce whatever you're making.
Folks tend to want to overcomplicate that right out of the gate — especially leadership. I'm talking to all you CFOs out there: you want real-time tracking and to capture everything, and I'm like, it's too much. Start with the basics on your routings and keep them very, very simple.
Keep Routings Simple — the 80/20 Approach
Stephanie: If you've never used routings before, just try to get something in place. I talk to customers all the time, and it's very all-or-nothing — "I don't want to do any of them" or "I want to do all of them." No — can't we Goldilocks this? Can't we start with a few that provide the 80/20 value and build on that? Use some time standards, get a little labor and overhead built in, maybe it's just a one-line route. Nothing crazy. Start with the basics.
Then as everything else gets rolling and we start doing planning, we can get more detailed on the routes. Once you see how things are going, you can manage more detail.
Host: We talked about adoption, and about slowing down production. If you throw a bunch of detailed route tracking at your production staff right away, you'll be lucky if they don't all quit — it's too much. Don't slow down the whole business just to capture a lot of data.
Stephanie: My question is always: if you had this perfect level of detailed data, what would you do with it? Usually they can't answer. And if they can't answer, we're not going to do it. There's a lot of "just in case" data out there — it's the world's worst.
The "Just in Case" Data Trap
Host: We do it in our own homes too — we keep stuff "just in case." There's that social media clip of the dad who has one specific block of wood in the basement, and when someone needs it to prop up a bed, he's got exactly the piece they need. That's the mentality: I'll keep this just in case there's a problem I need to troubleshoot later.
Stephanie: And it usually doesn't pan out. You end up tail-wagging-the-dog — spending so much time trying to spec out the perfect process to capture the data that you never actually implement, and you get fatigued. Meanwhile the data you do have stays inaccurate anyway.
Host: It's similar to budgeting or forecasting. You start with a guess, then an educated guess, then you refine it. I use the analogy that a plane takes off from New York to LA and is off course 90% of the time — but the autopilot is constantly correcting. Budgeting is like that: you start, then course-correct, and eventually you nail it. But if you don't start, you never get the feedback to course-correct.
Stephanie: Exactly. Everybody gets stuck in the preflight routine and never actually gets off the ground.
CADTALK's Approach to Routings
Host: What you talked about — BOMs, manual steps, routings — is something CADTALK does itself. A lot of our customers, we tell them we handle routings as part of our integration, and we try to get them to actually use them. I'm hearing more customers ask about routings these days, which is a good sign — it means manufacturers are thinking in the right direction.
You're talking about what comes after scheduling and planning, but I want to tie it back further, because before scheduling and planning is BOM accuracy, and before that is: where's the data even coming from? That's where we play — before you get to scheduling, planning, and MRP, you have to back up into the process. Most people want to skip straight to the fun part: "we bought this ERP for scheduling and planning, let's get that going." Then it's, "wait, we need clean data and a good process first" — and that pre-work is what stands between them and the exciting part.
A Real Example: Backwards Priorities
Stephanie: I spoke at Community Summit last year, and one of my sessions was on planning. A guy in the audience told me — in front of the whole room — that his company bought their system specifically to do scheduling and planning. I asked him: how accurate is your inventory? Are you doing cycle counts? Physicals? How do you feel about your inventory accuracy? He said, "Well, that's why we want to do planning — because our inventory isn't right." And I said, "Wait, that's backwards."
We ended up having a whole conversation, in front of about 60 people, about getting inventory accurate first. To do that you need to know what items you have, where they're located, and what's on your BOM — all of that flows in, plus the business processes for how those transactions get updated. Until all of that works, planning is worthless.
Host: It's like trying to plan your life without knowing your own schedule. You can't plan a vacation if you don't know what days you have off.
It's Not Just You — Everyone Has the Same Gaps
Host: Stephanie, it's great hearing your experience with these growing mom-and-pop shops. It's also good to talk to ERP consultants like you, because we're playing the same game on the front end — we believe in process, we want good data in the system, and we want to reduce friction to make it easier to automate for customers. We're fighting the same fight: good engineering processes, good data management, good standards. If you don't have a good starting point, everything downstream suffers.
Stephanie: It is common, and I think that's important for people to hear. Everybody's had these challenges. When I worked in industry as a manufacturing manager, I had the same problems, the same blind spots. We see it every day, across every kind of manufacturer. We all have the same challenges — we're not that special.
Host: Whenever I'm talking to a customer and ask hard questions, they get sheepish — like they're embarrassed to show me a messy house. But everybody has a messy house. You're not uniquely behind; you're right where you need to be, and we're just going to take you to the next stage.
The "Second Opinion" and the Power of Knowing
Stephanie: Clients who come to us for a second opinion — even if we didn't do their original implementation — get a document from us that lays out all the "uglies." I've had people tell me they're embarrassed by that document, and I tell them: stop, that's exactly why you called us. These are things we see from everybody, over and over. Your knowledge of the problem is power — now we can fix it.
Host: You can't beat yourself up over not knowing. The power is recognizing you don't know, finding someone to help you find out, and then fixing it. That's a completely normal process — realization, discovery, and then applying whatever change is needed.
Final Takeaways: Process, Technology, Automation
Host: As we wrap up — what's one or two things you'd want people to take away from this conversation?
Stephanie: I'll go back to my three things, in order: process, technology, automation. Get your process and data cleaned up first. Spend your time and effort really getting those aligned. Then use technology to do it better, and finally use automation to do it faster. Having that data and process in line is where you should spend your time and money.
Host: That matches how we work too. One of the first things we do with a new implementation is discovery — show me your process, how do you know this data goes here, why do you do it that way? Once that's solid, we get the tool in place, make it easier, and only once that's working do we automate. It's even on our website — in the CADTALK journey, automation is the last step, not the first. Only a select few customers get there, and that's okay.
Stephanie: You just used my favorite consulting question: why do you do that?
Host: Folks get tired of hearing that from me. Not everyone always knows the answer.
Stephanie: No, they don't always know — usually it's followed by, "well, that's how we've always done it."
Where to Find Stephanie
Host: Stephanie, where can people find you, and how can they reach you if they want that second-opinion review?
Stephanie: Join me on LinkedIn — Steph Clark. You can also find us at elliottclarkconsulting.com, and I have my own Business Central how-to blog called Dynamics Powerplay, at dynamicspowerplay.com. I write up how-to posts based on real issues I see clients struggling with, so follow along and say hello.
Host: That's a lot of value — we'll link all of that in the show notes. Thanks for coming on; it's always good to talk with folks in the channels we work with.
Stephanie: Thanks for having me — love to talk manufacturing anytime.
This has been another edition of The Integrate Intelligently Podcast. Thanks for joining us — subscribe, and we'll see you next time.
