Output Management in ERP proposals
Does the solution become so expensive that you lose the offer?
Output Management, Document Management – are these really things that an ERP supplier should leave out of their offer to the customer? Could its cost be what causes you to lose the order to the colleague? Does honesty not pay off?
Reports of Output Management being overlooked at the start of ERP projects are persistent, and Thomas Johansson, Sales Director ERP, Columbus, can confirm that there is a truth to this. “In a competitive situation, when bidding for an ERP project, the overall price often weighs heavily in choosing a partner. That’s how it is. That said, at Columbus, we are very focused on making sure that the relationship with a new customer ends in a long-term partnership, and here, the documents are one of the key factors for getting value from the transition the customer is about to embark on,” he says.
“The total project price is important, but documents are part of the long-term partnership”
But has Columbus never overlooked the documents during the proposal phase?
“Yes, there have been some smaller cases where price was a crucial factor. Or cases where an external advisor was involved, so we didn’t have the chance to engage with the customer from the start and instead had to fill out an Excel sheet. However, in situations where we have made a conscious commercial choice to tone down the documents and won the order, we have then discussed the value with the customer to assess together if it made sense to include Output Management in the project,” says Thomas Johansson. He is an experienced professional in ERP sales with a total of sixteen years as Sales Manager and Sales Director in the industry. His focus is on helping companies optimize and streamline their business processes by delivering value through IT.
About the value that is in the focus when documents are initially discussed in a customer’s journey to a new ERP system in the cloud, he elaborates, “It’s not ‘just’ a label and an invoice we’re talking about. The external documents are the face of the company. Therefore, it’s important that they are in place and look good. When we have that dialog with customers, it becomes more about opportunities than just cost.”
Flexibility and agility are crucial
He has been involved in many ERP implementations and has also encountered customers who think documents are something they can just code themselves later.
“Often, they come to us a bit later in the process and admit that they might have been too quick to make that decision,” says Thomas Johansson. “There’s a long list of such stories, but no matter what, it’s our job to listen to the customer, and if the customer is heading down the ‘wrong’ path, they need to be aware of what they’re doing and what challenges could potentially arise,” says Thomas Johansson. “This is where we bring our experience from hundreds of projects to the table.”
“In an Output Management solution, flexibility and agility are of the utmost importance so you can quickly adjust documents to changing legal requirements. After all, changes happen all the time,” he adds.
Consider future needs into the solution
Columbus has customers who don’t currently need a large solution. “They have a number of documents that are not very complicated. However, it is rare that we analyze and decide that there is no need for an Output Management solution. This is because we also consider the customer’s strategy. If the customer has plans for acquisitions and/or activities in several countries, the Output Management solution needs to be able to keep up,” says Thomas Johansson.
Also, there are projects where Output Management is a given from day one, such as in the pharmaceutical industry, which requires thousands of labels for many different products.
“We are very focused on analyzing the needs and have often experienced that customers gains a new perspective on Output Management when we look into it. They come to understand that there is more value in it than they initially thought,” says Thomas Johansson.
One example is a Danish manufacturing company with a proud history and a good brand. “At first, they were very focused on Denmark, but it turned out that they also had a setup in Sweden, something in Germany, and were entering the UK. The customer had a bit of an aha moment when we explained how Output Management could support their plans,” says Thomas Johansson.
The horror scenario . . .
But what happens if the price or other factors lead to a lower priority for document management?
Thomas Johansson shares a story about a customer Columbus took over from another partner. “The customer thought, ‘we’ll just code the documents ourselves’. But that didn’t work in the long run because every time there were changes in regulatory requirements, the documents had to be recoded,” he says.
“Additionally, there are ongoing updates/releases from Microsoft and other ERP platform providers, where customers want to have as few customizations as possible. The customer ended up realizing that the solution they had purchased was not very useful and too expensive to maintain, so we implemented a new solution,” he explains
