Implementation
Most of this project is not software
The platform is built. What takes the time is your catalogue, your pricing rules and your ERP, and those are the three things that decide whether a rollout takes six weeks or six months. Here is how we run it, and what we need from you.
The stages
How a rollout runs
- 1
Discovery
We look at your catalogue, your price lists and your ERP. The output is a written scope with the things that will be hard named up front, not discovered in week six.
What we need from you
A catalogue export, a price list, and an hour with whoever knows the pricing.
- 2
Data and connection
Items, customers and price lists come across from your ERP, or from file if you would rather start there. You see your own catalogue in Carrots and tell us what looks wrong.
What we need from you
Someone who can say 'that product is discontinued' with authority.
- 3
Configure
Price books, contract agreements, delivery days, cut-offs, order minimums, tax settings and your invoice template. This is where the rules that live in people's heads get written down.
What we need from you
Decisions. Most of the delay at this stage is waiting on an answer, not on us.
- 4
Pilot
A handful of friendly accounts order for real, on their own prices and delivery days. Everything else carries on exactly as it did.
What we need from you
Five or ten customers who will tell you the truth.
- 5
Roll out
Accounts move across in groups, at your pace. Phone and email ordering keeps working throughout, because switching it off before customers are ready is how these projects fail.
What we need from you
A short email to each group. We will draft it.
Told you up front
The three ways this goes wrong
Every one of these is knowable before you sign anything, which is why we look for them in discovery rather than discovering them in delivery.
The catalogue was never clean
Duplicate items, missing pack sizes, no images, prices that only exist in an old spreadsheet. This is the single most common reason a rollout slips, and it is entirely knowable in week one, which is why discovery starts here.
The pricing rules are in someone's head
Almost every distributor has at least one customer whose price is 'what we always charge them'. Getting those written down is real work, and it is work only you can do. We will structure it; we cannot invent it.
The ERP connection was scoped optimistically
'It has an API' and 'it has an API that exposes customer-specific pricing' are different sentences. We check which one is true before quoting, not after.
Start with discovery
Send us a catalogue export and a price list. We will come back with a written scope, including the parts we think will be difficult.