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At some point in every ERP project, someone says "we'll pick that up in phase two" — and the room nods, because it's the sentence that lets everyone stop arguing. Then you go live, orders go out, invoices go out, and that list quietly becomes something nobody talks about. This week Pete, Nirav and Emily try to work out what phase two actually is, why it so rarely happens, and whether it should be called phase two at all.

In this episode:

• What actually lands in phase two — and what you get free just by being on a modern ERP
• Why phase one never finishes when the MVP gets lost
• Six reasons phase two dies: no date, no team, no appetite, and the people who leave
• Book the audit, re-map the process, and let the business — not IT — drive it
• What can't wait: cloud tax, native financials, barcoding, AP automation, and anything that touches transactions
• Already on WMS or EDI? That's phase one, not phase two
• No automation until the team can fly manually

Hosts: Peter Nicholson · Nirav Shah (AdCirrus ERP) · Emily Browning

No sponsors, no adverts. We were going to sort that out in phase two.

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The demos are done, the contract's signed, and a calendar invite has landed that just says "discovery". This week Pete, Nirav and Emily take on the first real phase of an ERP implementation — the week where the business has to explain how it actually operates, and where projects are quietly won or lost.

Emily opens with the definition worth pinning to the wall: discovery week is the kickoff, and its entire purpose is that the requirements get laid out now. Her test for a good one is blunt — if a pile of new requirements turns up mid-project, the discovery wasn't done properly. Nirav draws the line most businesses miss: the discovery you got during the sales cycle was a "do we have a deal?" exercise, not the real thing. The real thing starts after signature, and the last 10% it surfaces is what makes or breaks the project.

From there it gets practical. Why sessions run by department, so the order entry team can complain about finance in peace (and vice versa). Pete's four buckets for every gap that comes up — configuration, customisation, training, or a business process change — and Nirav on what genuinely forces the customisation route: compliance, third-party integrations, and people who simply won't change. Emily's rule might be the most valuable thing in the episode: the vendor does not discuss customisations with her users. Process, yes. Solutions go to her and the project team — because "yeah, the system can do that" without "...and that's a customisation" is how budgets die.

Then the week itself. What to send the partner before Monday (invoices, SOPs, the sales report that runs every Monday morning). Why a blank whiteboard on day one means you've already failed. Why warehouse discovery happens on the warehouse floor, where the partner can point at a pile of paper and ask "what's that?" — and learn that someone scans every page to accounts at the end of each shift. The whiz kid you need in the room, the grounded voice who can answer "when did that last actually happen?", and why you never give the know-it-all the pen.

And the Friday test. Nirav wants pilot scripts — hundreds of documented business scenarios, 80–90% complete, that become the training plan, the testing plan and the partner's liability shield. Pete wants a re-edited project plan and a message for the users so they don't hear silence until UAT. Emily wants you to take the vendor to dinner, because for the price of a few cocktails it's the cheapest consultancy you'll ever buy.

In this episode:

• Sales discovery vs functional discovery — and why confusing them costs you the project
• Who should be in the room (more people than you think), and who never gets the pen
• The four buckets: configuration, customisation, training, or process change
• Emily's rule: the vendor never talks customisations with your users
• Walking the floor: partial-shipment spreadsheets, paper piles, and everything a conference room won't surface
• What must exist by Friday: pilot scripts, a re-edited plan, and a message for your users

Hosts: Peter Nicholson · Nirav Shah (AdCirrus ERP) · Emily Browning

No sponsors, no adverts. But smash the like button and we'll plant a tree — verified by photographs of the same tree from several different angles.

This one's for Morgan, the show's fourth (unofficial) host, who joins us in photo form from here on. With us in spirit.

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Eighty-odd episodes of this show and every one of them has pointed the same way: up. Outgrow the spreadsheets, upgrade, migrate to the cloud, choose your first ERP.

This week Pete, Nirav and Emily go the other way and ask the question nobody puts on a slide — should you downgrade?

In this episode:

• What tier 1, upper tier 2 and lower tier 2 actually mean, straight from Panorama's 2026 report
• The five-user F&O implementation, and how overselling happens
• Why third-party ISVs have quietly closed the gap between the tiers
• Whether you can feed your ERP — and what happens to master data when you can't
• The utilisation audit: print the feature list, mark every line, count what you never use
• Why a downgrade is still a full migration, whatever the licence cost says

Hosts: Peter Nicholson · Nirav Shah · Emily Browning

No sponsors, no adverts. Still nothing from Starlink. And we're not saying the accounting one out loud any more in case the AI starts advertising it at us.

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