Andrea Jones explains the importance of assessing partnership 'nuances' during ERP/system selection. Using a dating-relationship analogy, she argues that objective third-party questioning helps reveal strengths and risks in long-term vendor relationships, and she urges organizations to clarify priorities (customization, integrations, price, timelines) up front because implementations are costly and long-lasting.
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Hi, I'm Andrea Jones. Today we're going to talk about my favorite step in a system selection or an ERP selection process. We call it understand the nuances of partnership. And of course, it's also the most ambiguous. Right? Like, it's really hard to measure this. What are the nuances? You know, are there a checklist of nuances you need to understand? Does everybody have the same ones? Well, there could be a bit of a checklist, but probably not everybody will have the same one. So I'm going to give a bit of an analogy here. You know how when you're dating someone, sometimes it's hard to see through the enamor that you have, but maybe if you ask a really good friend or family member to help you kind of see the good and maybe also the challenging aspects of the relationship, they may be able to see a bit more clearly than you or, you know, you don't want to ask those tough questions like do you like to go on to the beach or to the mountains for vacation? I mean, those are silly questions, but you get what I'm saying, right? Sometimes it's easier as an objective third party to see a little more clearly or even to be more free to ask some of the questions. I know way back when I was dating, sometimes I put my friends up to asking whoever it was some of the questions I was uncomfortable asking because I didn't want them to think differently of me. Right. So I realize it's a bit of a stretch. We're talking about a transactional sort of financial and collaborative working relationship. But in some ways there's a lot of parallels. Because when you choose a system and really a partner to deliver that system, to implement it, and to be your ongoing support for, I mean, we're not talking just a year or two. This isn't a short term partnership, is it could go on for decades. Right. So it's very important to get it right. And it's so expensive and so challenging for the organization. We'll get into that with implementation. You know, that's such a big change that you don't want to have to do it again. So when you really work on the nuances, you think about what's really important to your organization. What are you guys going to need to do super quickly that the vendor will need to be able to respond to. Perhaps there's customization, you know, you're going to need in the future, or there's integrations, you know you're going to need. Or maybe you think to yourself, you know, we're going to go plain vanilla. We don't want to spend a lot of money, so those things aren't as important to us. But the price really is. And being very crystal clear up front every single time, or we're having some kind of package deal that is not to exceed. You know, there are different things for everyone. And when you have a partner like us who's not going to stay involved in this transaction forever, like you, we can ask them those questions the same. The same way that your best friend would have asked that person you were dating way back in the day before you decided whether they were the right one for you. We aren't going to make that decision for you. You're going to make it for yourself. And we'll talk about that in our next video. Thanks for watching.
