Most of your rollout budget is spent fighting the software

We sent those invoices

Heat exchanger plants, road sign production, distributors, logistics operators. The work was real and the clients got value. But if we split those hours honestly, a large part of them had nothing to do with their business. They went into making a rigid data model pretend that production batches and shipments exist.

Where the quarter goes

Two weeks of interviews the vendor should have done in 2014. Three weeks of workarounds for objects the system refuses to have. A month teaching people to work around the workarounds. Then training, which is mostly apologizing for the previous three items.

Pay someone to improve how you work. Do not pay them to apologize for a data model.

Help that is worth the money

At 50 to 150 people, nobody on staff wants to own this. Somebody has to design the process across sales, production, procurement and logistics, connect the systems, watch what breaks in month three and keep tuning it. We do that work for clients who would rather not talk to IVA themselves, and it is honest work.

The difference

One kind of help changes how your company runs. The other exists because the software will not bend. The first is an investment. The second is a tax you were told is normal.

If someone quotes you a quarter

• Ask which weeks change your process and which weeks fight the tool

• Ask who pays when the result breaks on the next update

• Ask to see a company like yours that went live in a week