Center of Excellence: The Bridge to Digital Transformation
As digital transformation and ERP consultants, we help and interact with clients daily. This give us tremendous insight into leadership attributes that exist in different forms from a variety of companies around the world. While the term Center of Excellence (CoE) can mean different things, it is typically a sign of a forward-thinking company that […]
Walmart and Accenture: Implications of hiring a “Big-Box” Consultancy to Manage your Digital Transformation
The idea of getting everything you need in one place is tempting. Whether shopping for household goods or for an ERP implementation, one-stop shopping has become fairly commonplace. But is it always the best idea to get your car fixed at the same place you buy your lettuce and toothbrush? There are striking similarities between […]
ERP vs. HCM Implementations: Which is the Better Bet?
I don’t know why I didn’t realize this sooner, but I may have discovered the real key to transformation success in the coming years: human capital management (HCM) software implementations. I have spent a good deal of my career analyzing why ERP implementations fail. But if my digital transformation and ERP predictions for 2020 are […]
How Much Does an ERP Implementation Cost?
More than anything at Third Stage Consulting, we enjoy educating and partnering with clients. While everyone would love an answer to how much an ERP implementation will cost, the reality is, it’s somewhat of a moving target. There are many critical dependencies that impact costs, and how you think about cost is important too. Let’s […]
Lessons from the 2020 ERP and HCM Report
The digital transformation landscape is changing at a breakneck speed. Technology is shifting to the cloud, new functional capabilities are being added at a record pace, and companies implementing these technologies are themselves going through unprecedented changes as well. Against this backdrop, we recently published our 2020 ERP and HCM Report. This annual report captures […]
What is an Agile ERP Implementation?
I have experienced and seen plenty of successes using agile development methodologies in various types of projects. Agile addresses many of the failures that have often plagued waterfall projects and can be a powerful approach. Then again, I have also seen agile used very poorly, as essentially just an excuse to have no structure for […]
Avoiding Land Mines During your ERP Software Selection
There are endless blogs on software evaluation best-practices and steps to take, such as documenting requirements, requesting demonstrations, negotiating, etc., and then there are the details within these steps that will crush your initiative if ignored. The phrase “The Devil’s in the details” holds very true for software evaluation. An effective ERP selection process can […]
A Perspective on Data Migration in Digital Transformation
Data migration is one of the most difficult and complex portions of any digital transformation. To better understand this, I recently interviewed Daryl Crockett, the CEO of ValidDatum, which is our technology-agnostic data migration partner at Third Stage. She is a leader in the industry, so we work with Daryl and her team to help […]
Why Digital Disruption is Overrated
Industry analysts and academics often tout the concept of digital disruption as a good thing. But the reality is that while technology has the ability to positively transform your business, it is more likely to create operational disruption of the negative kind. Digital disruption vs. operational disruption For example, while many companies look to disruptive […]
The 4 Pillars of ERP Implementation Success in 2020
We have seen a recent rush of requests for ERP implementation assessment and project recovery. Despite vendors’ use of accelerators and ERP software best practices, ERP implementations are becoming more and more difficult. Reasons for this include the complexity of system capabilities, the number of integrations needed as well as an absolute onslaught of data. […]
What is ERP Software? Explaining to My Kids What We Do
Although we advise clients on it every day, ERP software isn’t a commonly known term outside of the IT and consulting industry. Understanding the basics of what ERP software is and how it works is something that we often take for granted as independent ERP consultants. With this in mind, I set out to teach […]
The ERP Go-Live: Three Key Considerations
Through our years as digital transformation experts, one common area of concern in nearly every ERP initiative is that of Go-Live readiness. It’s a huge subject and critical path for any organization implementing any form of enterprise software. In fact, lack of go-live readiness is a key driver of recent ERP failures. Companies such as […]