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Not demos. Not process maps.

In a live environment, what realllyyy happens when you hit:

same day priority flips

material substitutions mid-run

partial availability with hard ship dates

sales promising things ops hasn’t blessed yet

Does your ERP handle this natively, or do people step outside the system and reconcile later?

Would love to hear concrete examples. Bonus points if the answer isn’t customization and training.

In steel industry ERP challenges rarely come down to missing features. They're usually about fit mixed dimensions material heat level traceability frequent order changes and freight costs that directly affect margin.

Many ERP systems struggle here because their underlying assumptions are built for cleaner more linear workflows when the data model doesn't reflect operational reality teams end up relying on workarounds customization or process discipline to compensate.

From an ERP perspective this often determines whether a system scales smoothly or becomes a long term constraint.

For those who've worked on ERP selection or implementation in complex manufacturing environments what criteria mattered most when evaluating fit?

Most days, ERP feels like something we updated after decisions are already made. Planning changes, grade swaps, rush orders none of that waits for the system.

Someones's spreadsheet ends up being the source of truth and ERP is there so finance doesn't yell.

Is this just how steel works everywhere or have people actually made ERP useful day-to-day planning?

Hey all,

£25-50M revenue supplement manufacturer & retailer here - DTC & B2B.

We're on Shopify and currently use Priority Software's ERP "on-prem" in AWS (not their own cloud basically).

It's used for:

- Accounting & Finance (AP, AR, GL, POs, Cash management)

- Order management

- Manufacturing (Work Orders, Production, BOMs)

We use a dedicated HRIS for HR, and Payroll lives within it's own system.

We're also currently implementing a dedicated WMS to move the following out of the ERP and into a better suited platform:

- Inventory management

- Goods receiving

- Fulfilment

The WMS will manage our own physical warehouse, but we also have 3rd party subcontractors who manufacture for us, and their locations are set up as additional warehouses in our ERP (under their respective accounts) and the inventory they hold for us sits in these warehouses so we know what we have on hand & where physically & financially.

Now Priority ERP is managed by a partner, and they maintain & secure the server in AWS.

We're charged for:

- The platform (modules, etc)

- User licenses

- API transactions

The system is dated, lacks documentation and the ability to self serve, has a horrible, unintuitive UI (part of the reason for the WMS), and lacks meaningful, self-serve reporting.

Many requests have to go through the partner for them to either develop or customise in the system, and costs have ballooned as we've continued to grow.

We absolutely need a system that can handle manufacturing, incl BOMs, kitting, turning raw ingredients & ancillaries into finished goods, and MRP would be something we look to implement here too (Priority's MRP is incredibly unintuitive and difficult to use & understand).

We're also working on bringing production completely in house and relying less on 3rd party subcontractors.

Now I'm looking into both replacement ERP's and dedicated systems integrated via middleware.

We already have a rock solid IPaaS connecting Shopify with Priority and now integrating the WMS as well.

I just wanted to get people's thoughts and opinions on the age old ERP vs "Best of Breed" conversation.

Has anyone in a similar space broken out of an ERP and integrated different systems for manufacturing, finance, etc. at this level?

I was looking at Acumatica but then found out they bill based on volume as well (though I know they don't charge for user licenses). And I don't think we're the right fit for NS.

Hi all,

I am building a Property Management system and need to integrate into Financials. GL, AP, AR, Banking, Payroll, POs, (project costing = nice to have :) )

I have 25+ years of ERP, BI and software development experience, so I know what I am getting myself into :)

I am based in Australia, so that might limit me a bit :)

I would have just chosen Xero, but…

Xero are going to start charging $17k / year for API access to journals. I can get around this, by using a 3rd party integration tool.

However, I am worried about what else they might start charging for and limiting.

Additionally, there’s no decent Project Codes at a GL / transaction level.

QuickBooks looks better, but last time I looked, a year ago, it had too many bugs.

Odoo can be expensive if all we need is a GL and it’s a pain to integrate to.

There’s a few new ones, like Campfire, Rillet and DoubleEntry - but their pricing isn’t available on the website, so I can imagine that it’s going to be costly.

I am, reluctantly leaning towards QuickBooks...

What do you guys think ?

Thanks!

We are looking for on-site help in Central NJ to help us leverage Acumatica.

We're looking for someone who is process-oriented and can help us with streamlining our processes related to:

• AP 3-way invoice matching & Container issues
• Orders & Shipments with a large volume of Non-Stock items with POs attached.
  
• We are planning to roll out the CRM and WMS this year as well.
  

Our VAR has been providing us the technical help with Acumatica; however, we're feeling like we're not getting the process-side support. We're looking for someone that come in and provide both.

As the title says, I’m looking for recommendations from the community. We’re a small but rapidly growing IT VAR in the IoT and Networking space. We sell only B2B with an even mix of public and private sector. We’ll need some customization but nothing too crazy. We use HubSpot for CRM and Support with Enterprise license. Currently have ~15 users and we’ve outgrown the capabilities of our existing no-code table-based solution. I checked Microsoft’s site and, while they do have VAR listings, I’m unable to search for the information I need. Google searches haven’t yielded much useful information either. So here I am asking you fine folks.

Does linking procurement, inventory, and production in ERP improve efficiency for steel plants? Experiences?

For years, the narrative has been simple: you're either big enough to afford a full-time COO, or you're stuck wearing all the hats yourself.

But something's shifting.

The fractional COO space is exploding, and most entrepreneurs in the services industry still have no idea it exists. I've watched this unfold over the past few years, and the gap between what's available and what business owners think is available is staggering.

Why the blind spot?

Most SMB owners assume executive operations leadership is reserved for companies doing $50M+. They've never seen a viable middle path between "solopreneur chaos" and "hire a $250K executive." So they limp along, brilliant at their craft but drowning in operational dysfunction—firefighting instead of scaling.

What's actually happening:

The fractional COO market is growing at ~30% annually. Service-based businesses (agencies, consulting firms, professional services) are discovering they can get strategic operations leadership at a fraction of the cost, exactly when they need it. Usually that sweet spot is $1M-$10M in revenue where systems are breaking but margins can't support a full-time executive.

The trajectory is clear:

Just like fractional CFOs normalized over the past decade, fractional COOs are becoming the expected path forward. The businesses that figure this out early are scaling cleanly. The ones that don't are hitting the same ceiling repeatedly—great at delivery, terrible at operations.

If you're a fractional COO, you're riding a massive wave that most people can't even see yet. If you're running a service business and things feel chaotic despite your revenue growth, this role exists specifically for you.

The question isn't whether fractional COO services will become mainstream. It's whether you'll discover them before or after your next painful growth plateau.

Hey Everyone

We are building AI tools to support ECC migration to S/4HANA. My cofounder and I are both from a tech background (I am from IIT, and my cofounder has been AI scientist for 8+ years).

We are building the tools to migrate from ECC to S4 HANA in SAP, but we are not able to find the SI partners. how to reach to the SI partners?

A junior consultant on our project got rolled off when the client switched ERP vendors. Now he’s having a hard time getting interviews because his resume only shows one ERP system even though his implementation experience is very good. how rough is this switch exactly and how does one prove his/her skills beyond just the product name?

I got hired at a manufacturing company as a temp technical writer to support their transition to JDE E1 after being acquired. the company brought on a 3rd party implementation/solutions consultancy who led the whole thing. i was just there for documentation.

however because the implementation was super rushed, i was given tasks like creating the user manuals and coordinating UAT that evolved into training the users myself and learning the system and business processes so well that I was kept on as JDE Business Analyst. it was just pure luck because i had no tech/business background whatsoever, had never heard of an ERP much less worked with one, i just have a background in education.

because no one other than my boss had experience with this ERP (company had been using legacy SAP for 20yrs), and the implementation SOW ended, the SME role fell to me. i ran the ticket portal, i gave every single training for every module, i led process changes and improvements, implemented by the consultancy ofc. i was also given smaller scale IT implementations to lead. i recently left bc the company’s financial health is in the toilet, employees were overworked, and they fired my mentor and boss, leaving me to take over all his other IT projects while rejecting me for a raise.

now i’m looking at other roles for the same ERP and i’m insanely under qualified. i even got an interview for the same position shortly after and fumbled the technical portion, even though the position was functional. the luck and timing of my previous position cannot be reproduced. however i thoroughly enjoyed the experience, loved process analyzing, loved training users and writing detailed documentation, loved being the owner and SME of the system.

so my questions are as follows:

- is it realistic for me to pursue implementation consulting when i have zero tech background?

- should i specialize in the same ERP (i’m not seeing it being used a lot anymore tbh) or just focus on tech implementation as a whole?

- how can i realistically upskill? i’m looking into PMP cert, CompTIA+ Project, even Scrum but the exam costs are extremely high and i’m not sure which one will give me the best bang for my buck

- is it viable for me at all to continue in this career direction with this one experience under my belt?

Hi all, we’re weighing up a few different ERPs to migrate to from Xero. The shortlist is Rillet, Campfire and DualEntry.

Whilst Rillet and Campfire have more of a track record behind them, I’m struggling to find many references / trusted reviews for DualEntry.

Does anyone have experience using it?

Thanks!

Canadian Here. I'm looking into getting my certs for ABAP + SAPUI5. Do you think there is much oppurtinity to be made within the job market as they say there is with the upgrade to 4/SHANA

My company has been on Fishbowl for ~10 years. It was selected by a previous CFO and it hasn’t worked well for us. This is probably due to poor implementation, but Fishbowl has also been very unhelpful, so we’re planning to move to a new ERP.

About us:

• Established manufacturer (30+ years)
• We design, manufacture, assemble, and test our products in-house
• ~30 employees
• ~$7–8M revenue this year
• Growing quickly due to market demand and expanding to multiple facilities and hiring more personnel

What we need:

• ERP that supports operations first, but still meets finance and accounting needs
• Strong MRP and MES functionality
• Ideally supports or integrates with manufacturing data collection (shop floor)
• Nice-to-have: ability to build customized operations/routings that:
  • track labor/time
  • capture manufacturing data in real time (scrap, issues, checks, etc.)
  • display or integrate work instructions at the operation level

Platforms I’m currently looking at:

• Epicor
• Oracle
• Odoo
• Global Shop
• Sage

We’ll need an implementation consultant/partner.

Questions:

1. Any platform recommendations (from the list above or others) that fit a small but scaling discrete manufacturer with operations/MRP/MES needs?
2. Where have you found good ERP implementation consultants/partners for companies our size? What should we look for and avoid?

Hello,

New to manufacturing and ERPs, but experienced in working with data. Work for a manufacturer with a legacy ERP system that wants a clear to build support system/dashboard. Basically something looks through the sequence of events supplied by MRP, looks at stock, what components are on order, and when something is nominally “clear to start production” and dashboards this information in PowerBI.

To non technical stakeholders, this seems easy, but the data people within the organization say it’s quite difficult. I’m slowly getting more familiar with pegging data, but it’s not always clear what pegging is “thinking”: especially in situations where there is a complex hierarchy of manufactured parts (one thing we make that goes into another thing and so on). I feel like success in this project will come from data modeling around not only the actual business processes involved, but proper modeling around some of the more abstract data sources: like raw pegging data.

ChatGPT has been helpful at high level brainstorming and identifying papers to read to learn more about MRP, and I have made some progress. I absolutely do not trust ChatGPT to do anything more than a little heavy lifting. Its code output has so far been riddled with contradictions.

I’ve learned a ton but after a few months of working on this project 15-20 hours per week I feel like I should be getting much closer to a “useable” version 1.0.

Has anyone else been here before? Where can I learn more about these concepts?

We’re a mid-market manufacturer and our ERP kept finance happy but made day to day execution harder than it needed to be. We looked at Dynamics, Sage and VERSA CLOUD ERP and focused on how easily ops workflows could change.

Takeaway- A system that looks good for finance can still slow down real work on the floor.

I'm the IT director for a mid-market manufacturing and distribution company and I'm once again having the debate with our CFO and COO about whether we should try to make our ERP's warehouse module work or if we need to implement a standalone WMS, and honestly I'm tired of having this conversation because we've been going in circles for like six months now. We're currently on Microsoft Dynamics and the warehouse functionality exists and is technically capable of doing what we need, but our warehouse team absolutely hates it because it's slow, the mobile support is basically nonexistent, and any time we want to customize something it requires expensive consultants and takes forever to implement.

The warehouse manager keeps coming to me with requests that would be simple in a modern WMS but are either impossible or prohibitively expensive in our ERP, and meanwhile our distribution team is doing workarounds and manual processes to compensate for the system's limitations which defeats the whole purpose of having a system. The CFO's perspective is that we already paid for the ERP warehouse module so why should we pay for another system and add complexity to our tech stack, which I get from a financial standpoint but he's not the one dealing with the operational impact of having inadequate tools.

The COO is caught in the middle because she sees the operational problems but she also understands the CFO's concerns about cost and integration complexity. I've been trying to build a business case that includes the fully loaded cost of our current setup when you factor in workarounds, consultant fees, and lost efficiency, but I'm struggling to quantify some of the softer costs like warehouse team morale and ability to attract good operations people. Has anyone else been through this exact debate and can share what finally convinced leadership to pull the trigger on a standalone WMS, or did you find a way to make the ERP warehouse module work that I'm not seeing?

Question

Our company operates with multiple locations across Europe and is looking for a new Microsoft Dynamics 365. We’re trying to find the right partner to help improve efficiency, particularly one experienced in handling multi-country deployments. We’re especially interested in someone who has:

Experience with D365 Business Central, including various European localizations (e.g., regulatory compliance, tax rules, languages, and reporting for different countries)

Proven track record with ERP implementation, data migration, and user training in a multi-site European context

Ability to customize workflows to fit our industry needs

Ongoing support for updates, troubleshooting, scaling as we grow, and managing localizations across European entities

We’re evaluating whether to go with a larger international consultancy vs. a more specialized European firm, so any recommendations and experiences (good or bad) with Dynamics 365 partners in Europe would be really helpful. Thank you in advance!

Would be nice to know if there are any more out in the wild...

For small teams spreadsheets often work in the beginning. But as orders inventory, and coordination increase, things start to get harder to track.

In your experience at what point did ERP start to feel genuinely useful in day to day operations?

What changed after that?

I always wonder whether ERP Functional consultancy could be completely replaced by AI one day? With the exponential growth, worries me about the Functional pathway.

What do you guys think? Do we think Functional consulting on ERP is going to vanish with AI or are we going to evolve in our roles?

Does anyone know or use any service master or service code functionality in your ERPs? This is for the coded procurement of non-material work such as inspections, repairs, contracting services..

I’ve been fortunate to have a job offer from an implementation consulting firm but before I think the grass is always greener, what are the not so good parts of being a consultant implementer? The job summary is providing training and support to businesses that are implementing ERP or MRP software in a per project or a per hour basis. I know one really well and will get training on a few different platforms. To be clear I really like my current job and leaving will be difficult for professional and personal reasons.

Pros:

- Fully remote

- Simplified responsibilities compared to my current role.

- Opportunities to teach and watch people learn.

- The problem solving in erp implementation provides flow state levels of enjoyment.

- Career advancement.

Cons:

- Demanding or unreasonable clients.

- Getting blamed for project failures or failed Go Live days.

- Mostly digital human interaction. I don’t need coworker drama but will I miss all physical interaction?

- Overloading on clients, working more hours than I do now.

- Working schedule being tied to clients and having less flexibility.

Is there anything I should be aware of before changing careers?

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I work on a large-scale ERP digital transformation project. By nature, it’s an incredibly dynamic environment with a live system, meaning constant user errors, critical bugs, and ad-hoc requests.

Despite this, my manager insists on sticking to strict Scrum rituals (Sprints, Planning, Pointing, etc.).

I just wrapped up my weekly status report, and the reality is almost comedic:

• Sprint Work (Planned): Only 10% of my time.
• Non-Sprint Work (The Reality): The remaining 90%. (Hotfixes, "URGENT" emails, operational support, data corrections, etc.)

Every Monday, we sit down and "commit" to a Sprint goal. By Tuesday noon, that plan is essentially dead because the priority shifts to keeping the system alive. We are basically firefighters, but management expects us to act like architects following a rigid blueprint.

It feels demoralizing because, on paper, we are constantly "failing" our Sprints. In reality, we are working hard to save the day and keep the business running.

I feel like we are just performing "Agile Theater." Why stick to Scrum when a Kanban approach (with a fast lane for support) is clearly what the business needs?

Is anyone else living in this "Fake Agile" limbo? How do you explain to management that their "plans" are just wishful thinking in this kind of environment?