Ask the right questions, choose the right ERP
Whether you're in SaaS, retail, utilities, telecommunications, manufacturing, or any other sector with a recurring revenue model, choosing the right ERP system for financial management is vital for complex subscription and usage-based billing models.
This webinar explores critical considerations when selecting an ERP system, particularly for companies embracing scalability, usage-based pricing, and AI-driven innovation. ERP selection is no longer just about accounting—it’s a strategic business decision impacting cross-departmental efficiency, customer experience, and long-term growth. With insights from ERP experts, you learn how to evaluate platforms, avoid common pitfalls, and ensure your choice aligns with both current and future business needs.
Transcript
Jon Leipzig: All right, well thanks everyone for joining. I'm Jon Leipzig and I'm joined by Derek Hitchman and today we're going to talk a little bit about ERP evaluations, how they've changed over the last decade and dig a little bit into usage-based pricing and how AI is impacting ERP evaluations and even the role of the CFO.
So just a little background on myself. I am the head of our Zone Billing Center of Excellence. I actually spent the first decade of my career in accounting and finance. So was a CFO, controller, implemented a handful of ERPs and then have been working in the NetSuite space for about the last 10 years as both a solution engineer and sales and now working for Zone & Co, which builds solutions in the NetSuite platform across the entire Suite from AP/AR for the office of the CFO. So Derek, do you want to do a quick intro as well?
Derek Hitchman: Sure, yeah, thanks. And thanks for having me, Jon.
So this is Derek Hitchman. I've also been working in the NetSuite space about 10 years. I originally founded a company, SCS Cloud, as a NetSuite reseller and implementer, and grew that business up to about 100 people and recently merged with CrossCountry Consulting.
So now I lead the NetSuite practice at CrossCountry Consulting and lead our team in delivery of NetSuite services within that organization. So, very excited to be here today.
I've personally worked on, architected many NetSuite projects over the years and still get pretty deeply engaged inside of that ecosystem as well as all of the other solutions that plug in and work to make NetSuite a real valuable tool for the office of the CFO and operations and beyond these days. So thanks for having me.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah, yeah, excited to chat with you. I know you and I have known each other for a long time, probably eight or so years seeing each other at NetSuite or at SuiteWorld together. And so we have a lot of experience in how the industry has changed on the ERP evaluations.
And so, you know, the first question I have for you is why is scalability more critical than ever in ERP evaluations, especially for software and technology companies?
Derek Hitchman: I mean, I think, for scalability, we're seeing a lot of companies move on to these technology platforms that have huge growth planned and then go out and actually execute successfully on that growth.
You know, I've implemented many companies on NetSuite that were just three or four people when we got them on the platform and then grew and scaled to not only a lot of people, some businesses are people focused and people heavy. So some of those have scaled up to tons of employees. Others have just scaled through tons of transactions. They end up just growing the business so quickly.
And in certain industries, and especially in technology these days, or even physical products industries, there's a lot of companies out there that have been able to start, create a product, bring it to market, and it's so easy to then scale that product really quickly. So over the course of three to five years, going from just starting on a system to really having a, you know, potentially hundreds of thousands of transactions a month on a platform and be able to operate in the same environment is really important.
And I think companies are looking for that scalability in the system because if they try to swap systems mid a major growth phase of their business, that can create and wreak a lot of havoc inside of the company. So I think that's a big factor in it.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah, definitely. I think software companies these days, even a startup can be born global. They can launch products faster. They can be making acquisitions earlier. They can be changing pricing models faster. And from day one, they can be having compliance requirements or globalization requirements or even complex usage or pricing models from day one. It's not something that's only unique to larger organizations.
Derek Hitchman: Yeah, very much so. And I think that it's becoming easier to do that these days. Like lot of companies are expected to, say, sell their products in Europe or do things like that, which in the past, companies used to have to be getting pretty big before that was expected of them to do that. And now it could still be just a few employees and they're yet expected to do those things.
I think that people's expectations of technology have risen up a lot as well. So they expect the technology to be able to handle their business when they scale. They're not really willing to take the answer of doing something as a manual process offline or hiring a separate firm to do something outside of their core systems. They want it all inside of that system to be able to operate kind of in one uniform way.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah, yeah, I agree.
So there's a lot of point solutions out there though, now, right, we see that in AP and AR and billing and close management that aren't full ERPs. Do you feel like in the last, you know, decade or so doing this that you've seen companies are bigger than they were before evaluating for ERP? Or do you see them being smaller? And because of these changes, they're looking to grow off of the systems that they have now at an earlier stage or earlier in the growth?
Derek Hitchman: Yeah, to be honest, I think it's both. I think on the smaller side of things, companies are looking to transition from a tool like QuickBooks over to a more robust ERP type of platform sooner than they may have been able to do in the past. And that's because either they have a lot of physical inventory or manufacturing requirements, or they want to use these extra additional point solution apps that are going to integrate with a tool like NetSuite or a similar cloud-based ERP better than they will do with QuickBooks.Or it's because they see huge growth ahead of them and they want to be on a platform that can be stable for that growth. So I think on the small business side, they're getting into the ERP space earlier.
And then on the big business side, I think it's kind of becoming almost an untenable position towards your employees to tell them that you're using this ancient, you know, ancient tool that's programmed in COBOL or some old school language and it's really difficult to use and you have to use special computers to even use the tool. It's becoming almost an untenable position for companies to communicate to their employees that they have to do that as part of their job because people expect better technology. So we're also seeing those bigger companies being more willing or open to switch.
And I feel like a lot of those older tools now too are starting to either get deprecated or even those older vendors have procured new solutions and they're pushing those clients who are on the legacy products to move to the newer products. And sometimes that push to move to a newer product or a newer version of a product that's really a completely different architecture of something actually triggers the look for a broader selection of a new ERP altogether and potentially moving vendors.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah. And you made a good point about employee satisfaction. I think there's an expectation for automation, right? For companies when they're hiring accounting teams, they don't want to be doing manual processes all the time. And you see a lot of turnover and that has a high cost and then you're training new people and you're right. Because of software, there's this expectation that there's systems in place that they work. Otherwise you could have turnover that that's very costly to the business.
Derek Hitchman: Very much so, and I feel like it's quite interesting shift in the market because we kind of had that period of the great resignation where employees were moving from company to company and there was a lot of employee change and combined with private equity companies now really diving into lots of markets where they weren't before and they're acquiring lots of businesses that were kind of older businesses.
These employees that have been at the older companies and for many, years or potentially decades where they basically don't want the process to change. They're familiar with the process. They don't want the process to change.
There's a lot of now movement in those types of companies, either through people retiring, through private equity coming in and changing kind of the operations teams on those companies. And the newer employees that are coming in, they expect that automation to be there. And they don't want to go learn the old process because it's very different than what they're used to at maybe a previous organization that was running on newer technology.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah, absolutely. Do you feel like, so, you know, back in the day when I was implementing ERPs, it was solely the accounting team, the CFO team. It was sort of like, hey, you guys go choose what you want for the debits and the credits. And it was really more of a cost center. How has that changed? How has it turned into more of a revenue enabler or a strategic tool for the business where you might be pulling in different departments and teams on the evaluation?
Derek Hitchman: Yeah, and I think this is a critical shift and sort of a fork in the road for a lot of ERP systems now is because instead of looking at the back office software and the ERP system as a burden and a necessary cost in order to run the business and be compliant, people are really looking at it as an enabler.
And I think there's a mix of reasons for that. Some of it is that these newer platforms like a NetSuite or similar have amazing functionality, which can actually enable things. And then when you add on all of the point solutions that plug into those tools smoothly and easily, it really enables the business to grow and scale like it hasn't been able to do before. And so rather than seeing that as a cost, it's actually an area where people are willing to invest.
And in my mind, Salesforce kind of led the charge with that a lot as well, right? So they were kind of the-instead of just a place where you put your CRM data, it was like, hey, we can actually help you grow your business with this platform. And ERP is coming fast on the heels of that and is now really looked at as that by a modern company, is, we're actually investing in this tool. And there's real ROI in actually growing the whole business, not just in making our processes a little bit more efficient.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, you hear the message at all the private equity and online about the, the shift in SaaS and technology companies from growth at all costs to profitable growth. And I think more than ever that ability to analyze at a deep level, your expenses and how they're connected or attributed to the revenue that you're generating is so important.
And so many companies have, you know, SaaS sprawl, right? Where, as they were growing, they just continued to add on all these different tools because they were still growing at double digit or triple digit percentages and that has changed, right? Revenue growth is down, but profitability, everyone's trying to grow profitability. And so you'd need a system that can really analyze what that spend is and very efficiently in real time so you can make those decisions.
Derek Hitchman: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think that that's what people are looking for these days is it kind of was this massive explosion of a lot of point solutions and a lot of spend on a lot of different platforms.
And that's a trend that we've been seeing go the other way now is where companies are looking for a lesser number of vendors to provide their solutions versus constantly be willing to sign up for for new products.
And part of that, I think, is having less vendors to manage, having a more unified architecture and also security as well of making sure your data is not being sent out to too many different systems that you then have to control and manage as well.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah. And security and compliance is a big one with that too. I've seen that shift over the last five, 10 years, just people really needing to know where their data is going, where it's being sent to, how it's being stored. And that's, that's a big benefit to an enterprise cloud platform like Salesforce or a NetSuite as opposed to point solutions, because you can kind of control and centralize where that data lives.
Derek Hitchman: Very much so. And I think having the right ERP platform and a centralized system to be able to run the business is also really important in terms of flexibility because I think what we found too is that a lot of times these point solutions, they're very good at what they do as a single solution, but if they're attached to some legacy ERP system or they're attached to QuickBooks, they really only can do what they're designed to do.
When they're attached to a more modern ERP system, you can continue to customize even the point solution a little bit or the processes around it or the data that it's using by tailoring the ERP system to properly work with that solution.
And so, for example, if you are going to acquire additional companies or you're going to merge with other companies and those have slightly different processes that you can incorporate, if you're just purchasing a point solution and you're on a legacy ERP, if you go and acquire another business and have to make adjustments, sometimes that stuff just does not work properly. And so when selecting an ERP, you have to make sure you've got a flexible platform to grow with.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah, so typically when you get involved in an evaluation, what are the critical components that most companies are looking for? Like what are some of the inflection points that you see, you know, the most common among companies that are looking to upgrade systems?
Derek Hitchman: I think the biggest is that they want the right tool for the long term. I think that's kind of a key point. And more and more companies are willing to invest in something new that they don't know or that they're not used to or that they don't understand versus older tools that they feel comfortable with, but they kind of know underneath that they're not right for the long-term growth.
And there is a big push to grow businesses these days. You know, 5 or 7% growth for many companies is not really what they're looking for. They're looking for larger percentage-based growth. And with that growth, inevitably comes change. It comes new products, it comes changes to how the business works and so finding a system that can be actually scalable and align with the change that is going to happen in the future for a business, that's, I think, what is one of the biggest factors that that clients are looking for. They're obviously looking for something that can be implemented quickly and they're looking for a good platform, but in reality, investing more now for something that's going to carry the business forward for the next decade, so to say, is top of mind.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah, completely agree. Do you think there's any questions that you find companies are not asking or any pitfalls when they're evaluating that you always notice that you're like, hey, if you're going through this change, here are the critical questions you need to be asking of the vendors you're looking at.
Derek Hitchman: Yeah, I think that a lot of times when you go to procure software, the vendors make it seem really easy and that's their job, that's the whole point. And I think that digging in on that and really understanding that is important because implementing software requires process change internally. And that process change is sometimes the most difficult part of implementing the software.
And a lot of business owners or leaders will say, hey, we just want to use the system as it's designed. We just want to use it out of the box. And it always amazes them to find out that every business is different. And so the out of the box software, you'll get them 80% of the way. But that 20% of the additional tailoring is really, important.
So you can get a great demo of a tool and then you can decide you want to implement that tool out of the box and you can attempt to do that. But a lot of times we see people struggle with that if that software or that tool does not allow for that additional 20% of tailoring to their business because inevitably companies are a little bit different. So you can get a great demo of a lot of ERP systems that are out there, but I think that's a key factor. And that's what we've seen from the services side is inevitably in order to get it done right and to kind of blend the business processes of a company, maybe change those business processes a bit towards the new system, but also change the system a bit towards the business processes and meet in the middle somewhere.
I think that has to be something that people are expecting versus saying, we're going to be able to change our business fully, or no, we're going to be able to change the system fully to meet the business. Neither of those are really realistic, and so I would say just be watchful of that at any point when selecting an ERP.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah. I would also say, and I'm curious if you noticed this too, that they don't know all the stakeholders when they start the evaluation. And as they go through some of the demos and the sessions and looking at the products, or even get to that stage where they're about ready to make a decision, they realize there's more stakeholders in the business than they thought, whether that's from the sales side, the product operations side, even marketing to some degree sometimes.
And I think part of that is driven by this change where it's not just an ERP for the accounting team. It's a cloud platform that a lot of different departments and people need to connect to. And I think part of that is driven by order-to-cash, right? Where, especially for technology companies, where a lot of companies are moving towards a usage-based pricing model. And now all of a sudden the engineering team needs to send that data somewhere and how does it get sent over and how can that team connect to that and maybe pull the data out?
And I think what happens in a lot of my experience is it elongates the evaluation because the accounting team didn't know those people needed to be involved until they got later in the cycle and somebody raised their hand and goes, Hey, I heard you guys are evaluating an ERP. I think I need to take a look at this. So do you see that happening quite a bit as well?
Derek Hitchman
We really do. Yeah. And we actually had a project even recently that had that is that it wasn't even during the evaluation. It was after they had selected and moved forward. Then someone brought the engineering team in during the implementation. Then everybody realized that, you know, the design wasn't right because the engineering team could not support that for their internal product. And so I think it's very important to get those stakeholders in and get them in early.
And also a big part of rolling out the solution - the moment that there's integrations related to that or other components that affect that, it can really put a dent in the timeline and the effort level needed to get the system live. So if you want to have a smooth project, knowing that early and understanding those stakeholders' requirements early and getting their buy-in on the system early is pretty vital.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah. Do you see any new personas or roles or people like that are either the first to initiate the need for an evaluation or that are running the evaluation throughout?
Derek Hitchman: I would say definitely there are. I think that the different departments and divisions in a business are oftentimes becoming closer together now with technology. So instead of the accounting department uses this and operations uses that and sales uses this, it all has to connect together because that's what true automation means, right? Is that it has to connect from your first interaction with a prospect all the way through to receiving payment from someone and reconciling that payment.
All those dots have to connect. So we're seeing, which is a good thing, multiple personas involved in the early parts of the buying process, but also we're seeing a shift as well where maybe the CFO, rather than just being financials focused, is also having a much broader reach over information technology and how the data all connects. Because if a CFO doesn't have the right data, then it doesn't matter how good the accounting platform is, they're not going to be able to pull the right numbers.
And accessing that data is becoming a lot more complex and a lot more integral to how the business is actually structured. Because if you're a technology company, maybe a lot of your financial data actually resides in your own applications or in your own database or in your own system. So integrating all of those tightly together with accounting is becoming more a responsibility or, at the end of the day, it rolls up to be a responsibility of the CFO because that person's responsible for getting the right data and having the right information to understand and run the business. So a lot more tightness of there or kind of the blending of a CIO or a CFO role or a CFO potentially even holding a lot of responsibilities of what a CIO would do before the company hires one formally.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah. And it kind of comes back to the comment we just made about these other departments getting pulled in throughout the evaluation that weren't there early on, which oftentimes is the office of the CIO, operational admins, you know, to some degree, rev ops. But, the one role I, you know, it has always been around for a long time. Is that like business applications manager, you know, director of business applications, you know, that's been around for a long time for, for midsize to larger technology companies.
But the one thing I've noticed is startups, they're making an investment in these types of roles or these teams because they realize the importance of we have all these applications, we have to get them to talk to each other. There needs to be a broader strategy of how they're all used, who's using them and how we get them to communicate to each other.
And I think to your point, data is driving that because from every stage on, especially when you're trying to grow profitably, the CFO, CIO and CEO need the data and they need the reporting and the response they get is we need some team or group to manage all of our systems to get that data to you.
Derek Hitchman: We're seeing that as well. I have a strong belief that if you focus on designing and architecting your systems and your processes correctly, you can save so much time on the backend, not having to build and work through data and kind of try to get information.
So it's almost like instead of moving a particular role later in the process, trying to go gather data and piece it all together, you move it earlier in the process to get these systems actually implemented and working and integrated successfully and smoothly running. And then the data is just naturally already there.
And so we've seen that too. And it's great to see some really high energy, intelligent, know, accounting focused and project management focused and technology focused sort of resources that clients have been able to find.
And when one of them is leading all of those business application rollouts, it goes back to what we were talking about on these point solutions. There's so many different solutions and products out there these days that kind of having all of the products itself kind of work in harmony with each other to provide accurate data out the end and smooth business processes is so vital to running and scaling a business that that's become a pretty critical role. And we really advocate for our customers to go find those types of of roles and resources to be able to pull into a business.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah, and help with the change management as well.
Derek Hitchman: Yeah, very much so.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah. So we've talked a little bit about usage-based pricing and just the broader scope of ERP evaluations affecting multiple departments. And I think the way order-to-cash has evolved or quote-to-cash or revenue lifecycle management, whatever you want to call it, is a big driver of that.
You know, what has your experience been with companies that are coming in and evaluating ERP and how big of a role that quote-to-cash plays in it? And what systems do you see them using and moving off of? Like you talked about a lot of point solutions, which there's a ton out there for order-to-cash. What problems are they usually looking to solve there?
Derek Hitchman: I think from our side, what we've seen is that they're looking to find a unified system to do everything from start to finish and a system that can change with their business. And it depends on the type of company, right? So a physical products company might be going down one path. But when you start to deal with companies that have their own products or that are technology companies or that combine services and a physical product or are pure sort of SaaS technology companies, there's a lot to factor in.
Order-to-cash is kind one of the more complex areas of those types of business because not only do you have to factor in your bookings and your sales and your contracting, you also have to factor in your billing and payment collection is becoming more important because sending in a check is not as desired these days as it was before. So accepting lots of different payment methods and having that all reconcile.
And then when you layer in revenue recognition on top of all of that as well, those are a lot of complex, actually different processes that all kind of need to work in unison together. And especially with businesses that are maybe collecting money as they're billing for services or that are doing usage-based billing, but that are also charging credit cards and that are also recognizing revenue and then layering that in with the SaaS contracts and that sort of common multi-year SaaS contract model that has been very, very prevalent. It winds up with some pretty complex scenarios and understanding what those are and having a platform where you can grow into more complex billing scenarios in the future is pretty important.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah, I was at a conference maybe five years ago and it was all about billing and revenue. And there was a customer on stage talking about basically advocating one of the point solutions and how well it was handling their billing. And somebody asked the question, well, how are you handling handling revenue recognition? And the controller, I think is who it was said, well, we're still doing that manually. So that's the next solution we're going to go look for. And it just, it always makes me laugh where these aren't siloed things. You don't just solve payments. You don't just solve billing. You don't just solve revenue recognition or even quoting. It's one entire solution. And if, you know, if one tool is solving one piece of it, you're not you're not solving the bigger problem.
And I think, you know, a good segue here is I think usage-based pricing is a massive shift in the market and the requirements that companies need or aren't even thinking about from a scalability standpoint. And I think, obviously, usage-based pricing has been growing exponentially over the last decade, but AI pricing is, I've noticed making a huge shift in that. What are some of the things that you guys see with your clients or seeing in evaluations when it comes to usage-based pricing and how the ERP plays a role in that?
Derek Hitchman: Yeah, it's very interesting question. And I think a lot of people that we're talking to, they're either doing usage-based pricing already today or they're thinking about the fact that they're going to need to do usage-based pricing in the future. And I feel like a lot of businesses or a lot of purchasing teams are tiring of SaaS contracts, which are a big contract over a multi-year period billed annually or billed quarterly and that being the model of how you buy SaaS products. And they're getting more and more used to a usage-based model where you can start small and then you can scale big.
And that is very interesting because companies, again, are being pushed to grow faster. They're being pushed to get products to market quicker. And an easy way to do that is with usage-based pricing because you're not you're not overpricing the solution for people who are starting small and you're getting that client and you're getting that business. So there's a lot more interest in that and it gets very complex in terms of how to do usage-based pricing because oftentimes you have to incorporate it in your own product or your own solution to track it. And then you have to also incorporate the billing, the revenue and the payment all in various different sequences of how that works. And so we've certainly seen a lot of interest in it.
And I think there's a there's a big trend to move more and more towards that. SaaS spend definitely got out of control for a number of years. And I think a lot of CFOs have sort of started to say, hey, you know, a few years ago, they started to say, we need to bring our SaaS spend under control. And usage-based pricing for the vendors is a great way to say, hey, we can bring this under control. We can get you on the platform without huge costs. And then as you grow, we grow with you.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah, exactly. You can align the value directly with the costs and it's, it lends itself much more to product-led growth for sure. And I think back to our point earlier, because of usage-based pricing and especially AI with, know, let's say Salesforce agents are trying to say, you know, what is the value we're providing? This is now an extension of your operational systems, not just a billing or revenue tool.
You need to be able to send data back and forth and say, hey, here's what the agents did for you. Here's the value you got. I need a billing system. I need you to calculate what that is. But I also need that data back into the customer portal or presented in a certain way on the invoice so the customer can understand the value that they got from those services. So you can keep them as a customer. And it's part of the customer experience, which is, I think, why so many stakeholders are starting to get involved in the ERP evaluation because they're realizing, hey, this is an extension of our operational systems. This is an extension of the customer experience. We have to make sure our requirements are being met, not just finance getting what they need.
Derek Hitchman: Yeah, very much so. That kind of goes back to that business is getting tighter and closer together, all the different divisions. And so it's sort of like your technology product that you're selling that your consumers are using, your billing of how you do the billing of that product, your payment functionality around that is kind of expected to all work in harmony and not be that you sent something off to accounting and you're waiting to kind of hear about it being processed.
And so that trend is definitely obviously going to continue. And then when you're going to select an ERP, if you end up thinking that you can use a more legacy ERP or one that's not flexible combined with a couple point solutions, and that will get you by, you might be mistaken if you fast forward a few years and your business changes to try to leverage one of these newer models to stay competitive, you might be on the wrong platform and not really able to compete with your competitors.
And I think that's a message that we're hearing from forward thinking CFOs, other team members who are evaluating these newer platforms and one that I really feel is important for the growth of business. And it kind of comes back to that full circle of, it's important to invest in your technology as a revenue generator, a revenue enabler for the business and to really lean into leveraging it to help grow the business versus viewing it as purely a required cost that you need for your back office to run.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah, absolutely. And, know, it's a great point that the changes, and I think everyone always says scalability, right? You need a scalable solution. Let's say you're looking at AP automation. Yeah, your requirements for that are going to change as you grow. You you might need a vendor portal or you might need different requirements, but generally speaking, the core basics of what you need will last maybe multiple years.
Now, when it comes to order-to-cash, especially with usage-based pricing, no matter what industry we talk to or company they're in or what industry they're in and they have usage-based pricing, they always have the legacy model, the current model, and then the model they're experimenting with or talking about.
Because I think a lot of people just think of usage as price times quantity, but usually it's, hey, there's a minimum commit or or there was included units that come with it. There's tiers. Maybe we're calculating the high watermark versus just all the full quantity. A big one is prepaid credits, right?
So eventually somebody at the company will go, hey, how can we get more money from our customers upfront versus waiting for them to pay for it? Let's estimate their usage and provide a discount and do prepaid credits of their usage and then draw down against it. And I think those changes happen every six to 12 months, especially when you're thinking about launching new products. I you just built some AI functionality into it. Let's launch it with this pricing model.
As well as lot of acquisitions that we're seeing, think there's a lot of consolidation that's happening in the market. And so now a company's requirements for billing and usage and mediation and revenue is very broad. And you have to have a scalable solution to do it.
Derek Hitchman: It always amazes me, you know, when you're working with technology, it only requires one usage-based product to need usage-based pricing in your technology. So it's not something that your whole business has to be usage-based in order to need that functionality. You just need to do at least one thing to do that.
And so, yeah, and I feel like it's a very, very amazing time right now because this sort of legacy model for SaaS businesses, particularly of let's do Salesforce and Salesforce CPQ and an integration tool over to a platform like NetSuite or Intact or QuickBooks and then bill that out from there and recognize revenue is shifting to be a completely different way of approaching and a different architecture of how the business generates revenue. And companies need to be prepared for that and not need to be trying to catch up when their management decides that they want to take advantage of going to market in that way.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah, I completely agree. I think, you know, that to summarize, I think the biggest thing, especially for smaller companies, early stage startups, is having the right teams to coordinate across, cross departmental on some of these requirements. Because if you just try, if you just allow the different departments and teams to solve the one problem that they have with a point solution, you then get to that point as you start growing and scaling that you have to replace everything. And the cost of that is very, is higher and the complexity of it's higher.
But if you think about it early on and you have the right system operations team and rev ops teams involved, you can coordinate all these systems to work together and to scale with you and you won't need to replace systems, right?
Derek Hitchman: Exactly, and I think that's the message underneath, right, is when you're making that selection to actually choose a new ERP system, getting it, thinking a bit forward and getting on the right type of technology to then keep every step moving you forward and not having to take five steps back at some point in the future and kind of rethink everything. The knowledge and awareness and help is out there to be able to do that and the right technology is out there to be able to do that.
And so I think that's a key message for organizations that are doing that. Don't just look at today. Look at what is coming down the road for your organization and make sure at least the platform that you're on is prepared to be able to be expanded upon to deliver you that for the future.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah. And and the last recommendation I'll make for, for anyone listening is having implemented a variety of ERPs myself. It doesn't matter if you have the best product out there, right. And a lot of times when people are evaluating systems are looking for what can the product do. And that's, that's the first step. The second step is who is the team or the partner that is implementing me? What are their credentials? What's their experience? Because you're only going to be as successful as that company or team of consultants that are implementing that product for you and training you on how to use it.
Which is part of the reason we wanted to bring you on, Derek, because we know you guys have great experience in doing that, a lot of success. We've worked together over the years in a lot of different implementations and seen the success of the companies that have been implemented by your team.
Derek Hitchman: That's great, Jon. I really appreciate it. And likewise, I think we've worked together on a lot of really successful clients doing exactly that, laying the foundation for their future-based growth on a platform that can scale them up to wherever they would like to get to. So looking forward to much more of it in the future.
Jon Leipzig: Yeah, well thanks for joining and we do have some documentation and some articles available for the "30 questions you should be asking when you're evaluating ERP" and subscription billing solutions. Please take a look at that and thanks for joining.
