Mobile ERP on the Move: Brad Feakes of EstesGroup on Decision-Making, Digital Transformation, and the Power of Real-Time Data

In the November 2024 edition of ERPNews, we explore the transformative power of mobile ERP with Brad Feakes, President of EstesGroup. With the theme “Mobile ERP: Empowering Decision-Making On-the-Go,” this interview dives into how mobile ERP solutions enable executives and teams to make data-driven decisions anytime, anywhere. Brad shares insights on the essentials of ERP selection, the role of strategic partnerships, and the impact of mobile ERP on industries like manufacturing and distribution. Through practical examples and thoughtful advice, he reveals how mobile ERP can streamline operations, enhance customer satisfaction, and drive business growth in an increasingly remote and digital world.

• How does EstesGroup approach the complexities of ERP selection and implementation, particularly in today’s fast-paced digital landscape?

I have a funny story about that actually; I once ran into a distribution company that was using a manufacturing ERP system. This is a problem, as manufacturing systems are not well-equipped to handle the needs of the distributors. It happens that the company in question was looking for an ERP system and had reached out to an ERP vendor who had both manufacturing and distribution ERP options. But it just so happened that they reached out to the manufacturing sales team, and they sold the customer their manufacturing package rather than transferring them over to the distribution sales team. Had they transferred the call, they could have better served their customer, but they had a sales quota to hit. It’s honestly a little disappointing to see that kind of behavior in the ERP space.

That is all to underscore the importance of selection at the onset of an implementation. It is hard to have a good implementation when you are starting with the wrong ERP system. ERP selection is a matter of eliminating systems that are a bad fit and then picking from what’s left. So, you want to look initially for things that will help eliminate the obvious mismatches. Price is one obvious criterion. For many small companies, an industry-leading system like SAP would be unrealistic from purely a cost standpoint. From there, you probably want to look at company size, as some systems are better geared to smaller firms, and some are better geared to larger enterprises. Once you’ve gotten past those general considerations, it becomes a matter of fit in terms of industry-specificity, functionality, efficiency, and interoperability.

In this context, ERP selection differs quite a bit between the manufacturing and distribution spaces. Manufacturing is more easily divided between discrete manufacturers and process manufacturers, and I find that to be the most important determining factor when eliminating ERP systems that aren’t a good fit. In the distribution world, it’s more diverse, as there are an inordinate number of different verticals that may need different functionality, and a given ERP system may or may not cater to the needs of a specific vertical. Some systems are good for electrical distribution, plumbing, and tile, while others are focused specifically on flow control products. Understanding whether a given ERP system can support the needs of your business, quite often, is a matter of understanding whether it supports your vertical in general. This is most often understood by determining whether other firms in your space are successfully using the ERP system.

• Could you elaborate on the role of partnerships in successful ERP projects? How does EstesGroup leverage these relationships?

Partnerships are critical in all phases of an ERP project, and all phases of the sales cycle, for that matter. Companies encounter a wide variety of needs throughout their daily work life, and not all of these needs are things that a company can directly satisfy. As such, we look to build relationships in the communities where we operate. It is rarely the case that one firm can handle every and all tasks in bringing a customer successfully live. This may involve software selection. We work with a great company, Third Stage Consulting, that focuses on the selection aspect of ERP. Conversely, this may involve third-party solutions and integrations. Our friends at DCKAP are a good example as they handle platform-based integrations such as e-commerce. In general, we try to stay very engaged with our partner community. A vibrant partner community makes for a creative and collaborative environment, and out of this comes a ton of mutual benefits.

• What leadership qualities do you consider essential for guiding organizations through digital transformation?

Oh boy, that is a loaded question! I’ll offer a few thoughts here. One key quality is the ability to work one layer down from the strategic and understand how digital solutions can help an organization achieve its goals. We don’t transform our organizations just for laughs – digital transformation is a thoughtful tactical reaction to a strategic need. So, it becomes a conversation between the business side and the technical side of the organization to understand how to best achieve a company’s goals. This conversation ultimately results in the construction of a roadmap that details the technical steps in achieving business goals. 

Another key characteristic is the ability of an organization to achieve its goals incrementally. When moving your organization forward digitally, it’s tempting to try and do it all at once. I’ve seen companies tank themselves by trying to do too much too quickly – trying to reach Mars without stopping to refuel on the Moon. So, the challenge here is to build out a roadmap that takes your organization where it needs to go but is divided into achievable milestones. I’m from Wisconsin, and if you’ve lived through as many seasons of watching Brett Favre as I have, you’d understand that the pass that most often gets intercepted is the Hail Mary. Good leaders find a way to make their way down the field without getting picked off in the end zone. 

• How does mobile ERP support real-time decision-making for executives on the go, and what impact has it had on EstesGroup’s clients?

Let me give you a specific example of one of the ERP systems that we work with – Epicor’s Kinetic manufacturing solution. Kinetic has a highly tailorable home screen. This homepage architecture allows a user to embed a variety of metrics, queries, summary reports, exception reports, charts, graphs, and KPIs to understand how a given department is operating on a day-to-day basis, using real-time data for this purpose. As such, a user can log into the system in the morning and can be presented with a set of actionable steps to be taken based on the state of the live data in question. A manager can see the higher-level metrics that measure the efficacy of the organization and provide the ability to drill down to troubleshoot as necessary. This is tremendous functionality, but surprisingly, it is a feature that quite often is underutilized by many organizations.

• Could you share examples of how mobile ERP has empowered businesses in distribution or manufacturing to make timely, data-driven decisions?

The question of mobility can be taken in multiple directions. In one sense there is application-based mobility as represented by things like iPhone apps. A broader form of mobility might relate to simply having a distributed workforce that is working against the same solution from a variety of locations. For the sake of our conversation, let’s focus on application-based mobility. Timely, data-driven decisions are a core benefit of mobile application solutions. The key here, in my mind, is having a set of tools in front of your mobile workforce, be they sales reps, service technicians, or delivery resources, to be able to transact in real-time in a manner that allows them to be able to make decisions based on factual ERP data. One great example of this would be the sales automation solution that our friends at Rubber Tree promote. Their solution provides just this kind of access to things like inventory levels and delivery times to allow a salesperson to commit to a sale while on the road and in the absence of the luxuries that come from a desktop office setting. Being able to commit to a delivery when you know you have the unallocated inventory available is quite often a differentiator in the distribution world.

• What are some key considerations when selecting a mobile ERP solution to ensure it aligns with a company’s unique needs?

Software selection in the mobile space is quite similar to software selection in other areas. You first need to understand if you actually have the need for a mobile solution – you want to make sure that mobile solutions are a business enabler and not just a solution looking for a problem. So, that’s a matter of prioritization: what are your highest priorities in terms of the gaps in efficiency or effectiveness that your company has? Once your priorities are understood, it’s a matter of understanding the specific areas where mobile solutions can help you drive down to a targeted solution. This is not a matter of mobile for mobile’s sake. Rather, it’s understanding whether your shop floor, your warehouse, or your sales team has needs that can be handled by a mobile solution, and then finding the right solution to address those needs. Mobile solutions tend to be a best-of-breed activity according to functional area, as I don’t know of many players in this space who are good at everything. If you have mobile needs in sales, you’d be picking between a subset of mobile sales automation solutions. If your needs are in field service, you would probably be looking at a different set of solutions. Once you’ve whittled down your list to the true contenders, it becomes a matter of understanding things like ease of use, the ease of ERP integration, the robustness of the relative feature sets, and which ones have the best ability to solve your problems and the highest ceiling to achieve further tactical goals.

• How does EstesGroup integrate mobile ERP with other systems like CRM and e-commerce to create a seamless user experience?

Interestingly enough, some of this goes back to our discussion of partnerships. Integration, quite often, is the responsibility of the third-party provider. Third-party solution providers frequently address the interactions with the ERP systems out of the gate, as they are targeting specific systems and not simply creating solutions without the necessary hooks. In these cases, our efforts are mostly focused on the network side and understanding how the systems best interact with the ERP in question and enabling the appropriate connections. This has traditionally been accomplished via opening ports and whitelisting IPs, but there are more elegant solutions that are slowly replacing these older methodologies.

Now, when you’re encountering a situation where a customer comes to you looking to configure a solution for the first time, you find yourself going down the solution development lifecycle path and working to understand what the system does, how it needs to interact, and what best practices can be utilized in the construction of a solution. Are you looking to develop your code base using an ERP system’s API layer, store the business logic inside of the ERP system, or some combination? These are big questions that affect the efficacy, portability, and maintainability of the solution in question. And similarly, you’re looking to do all of this in a manner that is as portable and as secure as possible.

• What trends in mobile ERP are you seeing, and how do they influence the way businesses operate remotely?

Well, one trend I am seeing is a more nuanced understanding of when mobility is appropriate and when mobility is not appropriate. This goes back 15 years to the example of the shop supervisor who is so busy typing up emails on his BlackBerry that he is not efficiently managing his shop floor. Mobility is a key element of ERP, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. There are places and times where mobility will help, such as out in the field, out on the road, and in the warehouse or the shop floor, but there are also times when a good old-fashioned ERP setup with three monitors and a fiber Internet connection is the best way to process the bulk of system transactions. I think we are starting to better understand when mobility is useful and when it is a pernicious distraction.

• How do you address concerns related to data security and privacy when implementing mobile ERP solutions?

Operating in a distributed manner, whether through mobile apps or VPN desktops, really needs to be based on a carefully developed and secure architecture. Multi-factor authentication is becoming a big deal with ERP, whether it is a mobile app or a web browser-based connection. Interconnectivity comes with a tremendous risk of bad actors, assuming the roles of everyday employees and exploiting them in deleterious ways. EstesGroup has encountered this on several occasions and has helped customers mitigate situations where their connected applications have compromised the underlying ERP system’s integrity. An insecure connection has the ability to subvert all of the benefits that you would yield through mobile connectivity. Such great care needs to be taken here. MFA is a start, but I am seeing increasing attention being given to additional layers like MDR/XDR in the attempt to lock down the interactions between elements of an ERP ecosystem.

• What advice would you give companies considering mobile ERP for the first time to maximize its impact on decision-making and business growth?

Companies looking to implement mobile ERP hopefully understand that it truly is a force multiplier and not just a shiny new object. With that assumption in place, I would recommend taking on an initial project with a clearly defined scope, to avoid some of the challenges that happen with these kinds of expansionist initiatives. Clear scope keeps you focused on clear goals, and these are relatively easy to measure and act upon. It should also be understood that a successful mobile implementation sits on top of a successful ERP implementation. If your data is a mess, if your processes are inconsistent, if your administration of the application is lazy, you will likely exacerbate these problems with a mobile solution, because you are automating chaos. We don’t build skyscrapers on sand.

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