A FoxPro application written in 2004. An ERP with no interface anyone can connect to. A spreadsheet that has quietly become a database. And a replacement project that has been “next year” for three years.
Most companies we meet are in one of two places: running an old system, or halfway into replacing it. Both are good reasons not to automate anything yet — or so it seems.
Read what the system already writes
Almost every order system, however old, writes a file every night: an export, a report, a backup somebody set up years ago. We read that copy, so often there is no login inside the system at all, and nothing is written back. The old system doesn't even know we are there.
What happens on the day you switch
The new system writes the same kind of file, under different names. The exports get pointed at the new system and the column names are mapped once. The jobs built on top — the invoice checks, the questions, the written rules — don't change, because they never depended on the system. They depended on the file.
In our demo company, replacing the order system meant six exports re-pointed and the column names mapped once. Not one workflow, rule or question had to change.
Why that matters for the replacement project
You don't have to wait for the new system to fix the busywork. Start on the old one, and nothing you build is thrown away when the new one arrives.
What we don't do
We don't choose your new ERP, we don't move your data into it, and we don't write into either system unless you switch that on — one workflow at a time, with a person approving each entry.