In this episode we sit down with Oka CTO Nick Owen, who shares his experience running multiple large scale back office integration projects for ecommerce businesses.
Listen on your favourite player
Watch the video
Tl;dr
- Which requirements should influence vendor selection
- How to best use external resources like consultants
- Lessons learned from multiple projects
Get hands-on advice from a highly experienced ecommerce CTO. Nick has focused on implementing back office systems and processes for many businesses and in this podcast he talks us through some projects he’s led, key lessons learned when selecting and implementing an ERP solution and gives advice on how to evaluate back office systems to make smarter decisions.
Discussion notes
We’ve loosely worked together at a few companies and you’ve always been pretty focused on implementing back office systems and processes – can you just talk us through some projects you’ve been a part of it?
What are your suggestions for a brand or business looking to introduce a new ERP and looking at options – where should they start?
There are lots of ways to capture requirements and potentially hundreds of them to document but not all will influence what platforms to consider: which capabilities in your experience fundamentally influences vendor selection?
I personally feel like ERP is an area that is very specialist – when it comes to look at the full remit you said that businesses often need consultants or external advice – how do you get value from this resource?
What are some of the big things you look at when comparing ERPs? Obviously this will vary across businesses, but like eco-system, APIs, documentation etc etc?
What’s your view on when a business needs an ERP? In terms of stage of growth or revenue. There’s a lot of discussion these days about whether or not to ERP or when to implement etc – what’s your view?
If you’re implementing an ERP for the first time, do you think it should be a phased roll out?
What are the biggest mistakes you’ve seen people make when implementing an ERP? And what steps can be taken to de-risk the rollouts?
Any parting advice for businesses approaching an ERP selection project?
Want to suggest a topic or guest for a future episode? Contact us via the website or on Twitter.
