04.05.2024

Thank you. hello everyone welcome to Today's Show. and if you are joining for the first. time this is part of our industry series. for which we meet every Tuesday at 5 30. p.m Eastern we review one vendor or the. solution and for today we have a very. interesting solution it's qt9 not sure. how many people may have heard about. this solution but there are a lot of. different Erp systems uh obviously this. is one of them so we are going to have a. lot of fun discussing that before we do. that we are going to start with. everybody's intros I am going to start. with uh my intro If You Don't Know Me. Sam Gupta principal at Elevate IQ. Elevate IQ is the independent e or p and. digital transformation consulting firm. on that note I am going to move to ND. first today because I don't have this. ticket and I'm actually going to work on.

The thicker the time and introduces. himself okay go ahead Andy. thank you Sam my name is Andy pratico. I've been involved in Erp software than. longer than either of these two. gentlemen have been alive. and I've worked all around America. specifically with manufacturing. companies by the way. and I also have a published book on how. to evaluate Erp software and thank you. so much for inviting me thank you so. much for being here Andy and no Erp. implementations can be done without any. mistake so far today I have done my fair. share but I could get I could fix it uh. you know soon so Dave over to you. thanks Sam hey everybody my name is Dave. Chrysler and I own an operations. Consulting business working with leaders. in manufacturing and distribution spaces. uh helping them to uh systemize their. business and improve processes that come.

To you with more than 20 years of. various operational leadership roles. which included several Erp. implementations so excited to be here. thanks for having me Sam thank you so. much for being here today we missed you. in last. um of a couple of shows I guess uh be. around for the spring break so welcome. back thanks of course and uh if you are. in the audience and joining for the. first time make sure you guys post your. questions and comments we typically try. to cover them during the show if we run. out of time we will make sure that you. receive your answers. on that note guys I am going to start. with the quick commentary. um on the solution and then um we will. start on the slide and Indie I know. you'll have a little background in this. one so I don't know if you want to touch. on this a little bit in terms of what.

Your background was do you want me to. cover the. um the solution first or do you want to. go first yeah no you go ahead Sam I mean. I I said I did come across this product. just recently and I do have a little bit. of insight but you go ahead. yeah so this is a very similar solution. and I don't know how to position this. but they are going to be primarily in. that QuickBooks sort of segment where. they are calling themselves. um as an Erp the way their data model is. going to be is going to be very similar. to how other QuickBooks addons are. created obviously everybody is going to. claim them as Erp because you know that. is the easiest thing to learn anybody. can learn an EMP in call themsel CRP I'm. not going to buy it if it's not called. an Erp Sam exactly I don't care what it. does as long as it's called linear PRP.

I'm buying that right Andy right. exactly exactly so in this case also. obviously they are called Erp and by the. way the most interesting thing about Erp. in general when you look at it's like. the bigger Erp systems the way they. start if you are really talking about. some of the horizontal sort of solutions. right they start in targeting these. small our patches okay so if you look at. some of the mainstream ELP systems I. think we discussed this point before as. well. umatica um. actually if you look at the newer. systems uh the cloud native ones. obviously the older ones have started a. similar way as well typically in the. traditionally traditional World Erp did. means all of the accounting system okay. but Erp system sort of grew after they. had that Finance and Accounting. Foundation that's how most Erp systems.

Started some Erp system started as the. MRP system and they developed the MRP. not MRP accounting functionality later. on which was tightly embedded. MRP too. um well so MRP I'm talking about the. real Erp Erp mrp2 I don't know how much. real embeddedness they had well really. what it was is that back back in the. early days and we're talking about the. 60s and the 70s there was just MRP. engines and that's it you needed a broom. you're the size of a room to run that. MRP calculation in the 1970s and 80s. they came out with this thing they. called mrp2 which included functionality. financials and PS Advanced planning and. scheduling capabilities and then in the. 90s is when they changed the acronym to. be Erp and that's what everyone calls it. today but as you're pointing out Sam. every soft work just the counting.

Systems call themselves Erp today. yeah and uh you know the best way to. sort of understand uh the embeddedness. of the data model and the nastiness of. the model I guess I don't know if. nastiness is the right term but the way. I like to Define this as you know I want. to take you guys to a washroom okay and. you are looking at this bunch of hairs. you know embedded together that's how. tight the data model is to be honest uh. of the Erp system if you look at 1960s. 70s 80s 90s. um during those days we didn't have as. much processing power to have that. tightly connected data model that's why. they had to separate it out uh okay even. today if you go to Fortune 50 Fortune. 100 they don't have the Erp system that. can process the workload of tools uh you. know Fortune 500 organization and that's. why you have to create the best of breed.

Architecture where they are literally. separating the the the processes. um so that they can perform the workload. the kind of transactions and the kind of. depth it is going to require. so again here is probably the the best. example uh you know if I could provide. that that's how tight the data model is. it that's how nasty the data model is in. general uh but overall if you look at. these Erp systems the way they do as uh. you know obviously they are going to. have a lot of things from the. operational perspective but they are not. going to have that GL embeddedness when. you look at the GL mapping to your uh. your payment term or to your bank. account to your customer uh and when you. don't have that then you don't have the. tight affiliation of your uh you know. the GL business rules the way your. transactions are going to be posted in.

Your account Tech system and by the way. it's not just the accounting system that. is a sort of a concern here uh you know. you are sort of looking for that. Financial Insight the more embedded your. GLS are going to be the more. traceability you are going to get in. terms of finding the real Financial. Insights and in the financial control. that you are going to get but most of. the smaller systems even if they map a. GL code sometimes customers are going to. say you know what I had JL code at the. customer level I have GL code at the. item level I have GL code at the bomb. level so why is infor so different why. is sap so different okay there you are. looking at the hierarchy of 500. different business codes at each of the. customer and customer class level that's. how uh beep it gets and by the way it's. not just the oneto-one mapping of your.

Customer to GL code it's going to be the. the business rules the business. hierarchy and that actually drives how. efficient your data entry is going to be. and that data entry is the operational. efficiency and that's what these smaller. Erp systems typically Miss so in the. case of qt9 obviously when you look. it had from the functional perspective. okay they are probably going to have. every single piece of functionality on. the face of desires okay because they. are targeting Life Sciences vertical. okay for Life Sciences you are probably. going to need pretty much everything. okay but obviously they are not going to. have the same traceability same uh data. entry efficiency that the larger Erb. systems are going to have so we are. going to touch on all of that but you. know in general in the QuickBooks. segment.

Um. your items are probably not going to be. modeled I think these guys have some. modeling but it's very very very lean. the way their items are designed the way. their bombs are designed they are not. going to have the same traceability that. you are going to be uh going to get from. the larger Erp systems and when I look. at the traceability meaning each of the. document as it moves through your. business processes are going to have its. own life cycle it's going to have its. own State that's the real difference. sometimes smaller Erp systems what they. are going to do is they are going to. combine two different states and you. know and they are not going to have two. separate document for these process. steps and that's why they are not going. to have as much traceability uh I know. it gets very very very complex to.

Understand uh. well I mean just one of the screen you. have in front of you say on the bottom. right hand corner. I mean for most people looking for an. Erp they would scan at the screen and. say yeah it does everything I need. exactly but this is everything. that's not how Erp systems are supposed. to work I mean if you're looking at only. the functional checklist functional. checklist you can never compare the Erp. systems because they all are going to. look alike. and and well. the the problem with the true Erp it. wouldn't be a list of 30 things like. this it would be a list of 3 000 or 30. 000 or 300 000. and it just gets to be. too huge right but but on the surface. the tip of the iceberg this list looks. like it's all inclusive exactly and once. you get into those nuanced scenario and. in my mind I always look for those.

Oneto-end scenarios uh you know the. traceability when you are going to look. at. um at the one to one level and that's. where your operational efficiency is. when you talk about the operational. efficiency the whole idea is how can you. decouple these process tips how can you. analyze them separately and how can you. make those individual steps. independently that's the whole idea and. maybe Dave uh you want to touch about. that a little bit you know uh as you. grow how the operational complexity. increases of each of these steps and. they all have their sort of life cycle. in terms of the way they move they. require their own sort of skill set if. you are going to have expertise for each. of these steps that's when you are going. to gain a lot of operational efficiency. if you are going to Simply you know put.

Everything together I think and I don't. know if this has coming from lean I. think lean had a lot of different. concepts about segmenting the the uh. steps uh if I remember correctly Dave I. mean if you want to touch on that a. little bit are you talking about the. process steps sir Sam or yeah overall. separation of responsibility and. optimizing them in isolation uh and I. don't remember the name of the guy who. actually invented this uh we were just. talking about uh him the other day uh he. actually invented the whole concept of. division of lab labor the way the labor. is supposed to be in in that in the. manufacturing organization he talks. about that okay you need to segment the. division of labor and if one guy is. going to do pretty much everything on. the manufacturing blower you are never. going to get the operational efficiency.

So that's why you need to segment these. process steps optimize for the. uniqueness of that step higher the right. skill train only for that particular. step and I think they talk about this in. the Japanese culture you know they only. do just one thing one thing uh you know. at a time uh in one operational step and. they don't like to worry about anything. else I guess and the way their processes. are designed uh yeah I mean it's kind of. that process breakdown uh thought. process and you're right on with that. and you know I think that's where some. of the small to your point some of the. smaller systems you know it appeals to. so many because kind of to the masses. because uh typically in smaller. companies you've got mult you know. you've got fewer people doing multiple. uh multiple process steps multiple. processes they can be working multiple.

Departments uh where you just don't have. that hierarchy in place so you know you. look at a system like this and Andy even. to your point about you know well it. looks like it checks all the boxes uh. you know from that standpoint and that. appeals like I said in my opinion to uh. more of the masses because that is a. larger segment of the of the market and. they already know that they've got. people doing multiple things uh and. therefore you know it kind of seems like. oh this will be easy to uh bring in and. kind of tackle from. an implementation standpoint how we. probably can just you know Hammer this. out ourselves it already integrates with. you know some of our existing technology. those types of things yeah and the. reality of it is yeah yeah I mean what. what you guys already said you know the. reality of it is there's there's a big.

Tradeoff for that so if you're looking. for a system that can you know satisfy. you five years from now uh you know when. you've had you know 10x growth well. you're probably gonna be doing at least. one more implementation you know versus. growing into things so it's um it is. interesting though uh you know to see. more and more of these types of. solutions come up it it makes me think. uh you know and I know we've seen this. with some other Solutions it it makes. you think you know this started as and I. don't know uh the background of this. particular solution I'm not familiar. with it so maybe this isn't the case for. this particular solution but what I feel. like I see often is uh a solution be. created for kind of one specific use. case and then it goes to to Market and. it's kind of like no we could do. everything for everybody uh but it it.

Started to satisfy one relatively small. company that has kind of grown over the. over the course of time uh and then they. start to push it out to the market and. you know find that hey we need to Market. this thing to the masses before uh we. could consider ourselves a an Erp. platform. yeah could not agree more great points I. guess business model is definitely a. very critical point that you mentioned. Dave there and uh yes with these. solutions they are going to be flavored. for a very specific industry and if you. are going to have multiple business. models as part of your processes then. you are probably going to quickly. outgrow that so that's another point. that you need to keep in mind so good. one there. um so if you guys don't have any other. comments I'll move forward with these. slides. um so here obviously they are trying to.

Target the life sciences that's how they. started uh now in the Life Sciences also. there are going to be many different. solutions to be honest okay for example. the compare the comparable here is. probably going to be Blue Link Erp we. have already reviewed that uh and by the. way I mean Blue Link Erp the way it was. designed even though it's a very Legacy. technology uh if you look at their. screens and I think that's what we had. said. um during early view that that that's. going to be a legacy technology it's not. a new technology even though obviously. they have somehow figured out how to. sort of Port that over Cloud. um so they have that as well but overall. from the data model as well as from the. traceability perspective it was a very. sound system to be honest uh okay but. you are not going to see the same thing.

Here uh if you look at the other. comparable system in this particular. space especially if you are talking. about the QuickBooks actually meant. which is targeted for Life Sciences then. the other systems are going to be D calm. okay decom is another system which is. going to be comparable to this one which. is slightly smaller it's not as big as. your info epic or so for bcom as well. the video data model works the way their. development was it was very sound it's. not really designed for those. multientity workload even though they. are going to claim that I am also. designed for multientity but the way. they are multientity functionality was. you know it's just a hack it's not a. real real multientity functionality but. if you look at their data model. especially from the Pharma workload. perspective they had decent capabilities.

There they had complete traceability. that you are not going to find in this. particular solution and that's what we. are going to touch when we review these. specific screens the specific data. fields where they are going to run into. challenges and this is going to be. slightly similar to Katana and Dave I. believe you missed that uh Katana MRP. even though even they are calling. themselves as Erp but they had real. issue overall the way their data was. embedded as part of their MRP so you. know they had the items model but it was. a very lean data model overall the way. their data was modeled so obviously you. are not going to have all those nine. layers of casting okay even if you can. get one layer that's probably a lot. again it makes a really good Japanese. sword though. how many layers do you need in the.

Japanese sword uh. at least 100 right yeah. and that's how those Erp systems are to. be honest okay they are really welded. together. at least 100 years. good joke Andy good joke. um so here uh moving right along so here. they are saying manufacturing Sales. Inventory purchase financial management. functions with qp9 Erp and again. everybody is going to have very very. very similar uh you know vernacular or. the language so it becomes very. confusing for your customers uh here now. they are talking about some very heavy. hitter pieces of functionality which is. going to through your audit okay we are. talking about design history record okay. this is a serious stuff guys okay and by. the way I have to commend These Guys. these guys started and I believe they. started as uh the documentation. management system now documentation.

Management system is a very different. piece of functionality quality. management system and Dave you are going. to love this the way their quality. module is designed in fact fact if you. look at the the the reviews as of today. uh the majority of them are really. because of their quality management. solution in fact they have sold their. quality management solution to very very. very large account so I'm pretty sure. they are probably selling their quality. management module as of today separately. than their Erp and then they say they. probably thought that okay I'm selling. quality management now let's create an. efp as well so maybe that's how big it's. the next logical step right. exactly exactly so that's probably how. they started so they are really strong. at the equality management piece of the. functionality that does not require the.

Same embedding of your you know Finance. capabilities that you are going to need. in the core transactional core. operational core Erp capability so. that's where the real difference is and. we'll talk about some of the workflows. some of these workflows that you are. going to find in your q39 solution it. will be very hard to implement those. even in the eerp systems that are going. to be designed for manufacturing can you. believe this okay so you are going to. buy epicots of the world enforce of the. world and then you are going to be. expecting that okay I am looking for. this specific document management. workflow that those systems don't do but. my qt9 is able to support that. so now you are probably going to. conclude that you know what qd9 is. probably a superior system that's not. true at all okay. they are able to support that specific.

Technical workflow of the quality. management that's much easier to. implement than your financial workflow. and that is the reason why they are able. to do that we'll touch on that when we. review the screen but I just wanted uh. you guys to remember that point so here. we are talking about design history. record electronic batch records for Life. Sciences now. we are talking about some really big. things okay and by the way let me see. these guys actually go through audit as. well and audit uh and companies are able. to pass the audit and we have seen this. as well uh in general the Auditors. they're not going to have as much. technical background the way they are. they are doing the audit they are doing. the audit the way uh customer is going. to buy an Erp system by looking at a. bunch of functional checklists uh the.

Question is I don't know uh you know uh. whether anybody should be questioning. the quality of these audits but in. general these guys don't really. understand the technicalities of the. system and they don't really understand. how traceable the system really is if. they had the technical background then. they would be able to know but in. general what uh typically they do is. depending upon how fast can you produce. the report okay that is going to be. their red flag that's how they approve. the audit okay so if you are able to. sort of get the report in this case. obviously you are going to be putting a. lot of manual effort for the audit to. establish all of those traceability and. we are going to review that in the. comments as well that some users. reported how much work they need to put. in for those audits but again you will.

Pass the audit because the Auditors. don't really have as much info. information about these systems and. that's why they are able to approve that. uh. so here a couple of points to note. overall uh we are talking about the. QuickBooks integration we are talking. about stage 50 integration so this is. one way of validating which ecosystem. they are hanging out so obviously they. are sort of the addon for the. QuickBooks and Sage 50 they are not part. of any of the mainstream. um e or B system so that's your. validation that they are really an. addon it's not a real Erp system. well it'd be interesting to know their. demographics because it's you know like. you say it says QuickBooks and Sage 50. integration but it also includes its own. accounting system. so I wonder how many their customers use. their internal one versus just an addon.

To these small accounting systems and. even if they had the internal accounting. platform Andy it does not mean that it. is tightly embedded and tightly. integrated and tightly could mean a lot. of different things okay some people. might like to sell tightly meaning one. field integration or you have a real. parent child hierarchy very deeply. embedded so again when sales people talk. that's a different thing versus how. implementation is going to talk so here. even if they have their accounting. system it doesn't mean that they have. the real Erp capabilities uh the real. Erp capabilities is going to be in. providing those layers the business. rules uh the nine layers of costing or. maybe 18 layers of casting uh you know. that's where you get the traceability. that's where you get the data entry. efficiency that you are not going to get.

Here. um so here let's move on so now this is. coming in I always like to call out any. sort of public uh statement uh whether. you can trust those websites or not so. here we have our friends at um. technology evaluation center. uh also called Tech and they have. compared and this is the statement. coming from their website uh and they. are saying the comparison for qt9 is. um acnew echimatica as well as chx3. now. uh you know see you next week. it's a very very very large and complex. system okay it is not supposed to be. compatible for this one uh if they had. said let's say d com that would be the. comparable for this one. um even accumatica has a lot of layers. um. yeah even accomatica has a lot of. different layers that this system is not. gonna have so I don't think it is a fair. comparison but maybe they are competing.

With these uh companies when they are. going into the deals and that's the. reason why Tech has listed them as as. their competitor but their right. competitors in my mind is going to be uh. if you look at the life sciences then. Blue Link Erp is probably the right. comparison again Blue Link Erp had far. deeper data Integrity uh you know tight. integration of the data sets even though. the technology may be slightly Legacy. but it had all the bells and whistles. that a medical device company or a. Pharma company should care for. well you know from a very high level I. mean that kimatica I'm told does a. pretty good job regarding process. manufacturing which kind of Blends. itself to the life sciences. Sage X3 has always been targeted at that. Marketplace. but I don't think they're talking about. size of company I think they're talking.

About specifically the industries. they're targeting. so again when you say comparison how the. customers are going to read so they are. going to read it. I get it right so. um and by the way just on that comment. that accumatica does not really have the. native process manufacturing. functionality day use and addon it's. not necessarily targeted for process. manufacturing uh. isn't it the same people who made. batchmaster though or something like. that yeah so they own the addon so it's. not academic owned message yeah academic. has a very vibrant Marketplace uh I mean. they accumulator would require an addon. if they want to uh sell it into the. process manufacturing space. um the academic native bombs will not be. able to support the formulation the. quality processes uh you know academic. does not have all of that natively uh.

It's just that you are going to acquire. addons which is not a bad thing always. you know not always sometimes it can be. sometimes it works great yeah. depending upon the quality of addon. depending upon how tight the integration. all the integration. um okay so now this is where the rubber. meets the road okay so let's talk about. traceability uh and especially when you. look at these systems and this is where. the comparison needs to be the way you. should be evaluating the e or P system. so for example let's say if you look pay. attention to how their job names are. named okay so you would notice that they. have the so number they have the. customer PO number they have the part. numbers in the name and that's a huge. red flag and the reason why these guys. are doing that to be honest I mean the. problem is not necessarily with the.

Platform itself the kind of customers. that are going to be there in that this. space they don't necessarily understand. how to model their documents how to. model the traceability how to model. their items how to model their barns. okay so for them if they are going to be. Implement going to be implementing. academic hour and four it's going to be. humongous learning curve okay so they. prefer a system that is going to be. Excel sheet like and that's where these. systems do a wonderful job in sitting on. top of QuickBooks where you don't have. to model your items you don't have to. model your jobs I mean you are never. going to get your job costing right okay. but that's okay because you don't have. the implementation dollars for the. system you don't you cannot afford the. Consultants or the CFOs or the. controller or the operations manager as.

Of today so this is a great solution for. you until you reach to a point where you. are going to care for the real. traceability. okay this is obviously not traceable. because what you are doing is you are. tracing based on a text string can you. believe this guys okay based on a witch. Sam paxed a string so they are literally. parsing a lot of this information from. the text and this is how a lot of. customers that are going to be in the. quick quick books space manage their. operations the way they are going to do. it is they are going to have a lot of. things in the description pay attention. to the description guys okay if we have. 50 different fields mapped as part of. the string that means they are. struggling with traceability they don't. have real data modeling behind the e or. P system they have to put a lot of.

Intelligence in the text field to enable. reporting to enable traceability that's. the reason why these guys are doing that. so this is where you can identify how. weak the modeling is going to be in the. system so this system is not necessary. traceable but Auditors they don't really. have technical background to figure this. out. interesting comment because if you look. at the job name. it says Franklin part and then customer. sales order number 40 53 cost bill of. material gust. part etc etc so it's it must be an. intelligent part number of some level. right no. sure even intelligent could be degree of. intelligence I guess. sure no I understand but but a person. using this would look at that this that. job name and know what it is. well so they are making a lot of. decisions based on the tax that they. have at the job name level because the.

Sales order is not necessarily linked to. Europe the PO may not be linked to your. part part may not be linked to your job. so you know you are going to have a lot. of challenges from the traceability. perspective I mean they'll be able to do. the job everybody's doing job somehow. okay but the question is how much you. are doing it in in the spreadsheet and. how much the system is doing it for. yourself and that's where your financial. control is going to be that's where your. traceability is going to be that's where. your how much data entry is going to be. required how much admin effort is going. to be required and are you getting the. real business value from the system or. not that's the question. here and by the way let me see you will. also see duplication so for example you. have the job number you have the part.

Number you have the job name typically I. would not see these three things at the. same time on the same sort of field. because once you have one then you would. be able to figure out the other but here. we have multiple Fields again it could. be the layout but these are some of the. red flags that you should be paying. attention to you should be digging more. if you are not able to see a real screen. for the item an item linking to your job. and job has different versions that. means they don't really have the. traceability you should also be paying. attention to the business objects and. the data model how is the data model. designed okay data model is where the. truth is with Erv systems data model. drives everything data model drives how. efficient your operations are going to. be how much over engineering you are.

Going to require from the e or. perspective okay what value you are. going to get from your real system data. model is where the truth is with Erp. systems. um so here I think we spoke about the. job name. um. okay now you are going to have some very. interesting things here okay so this is. their bill of material now you can only. find out so many different things uh. when you look at the bill of material of. different systems they will appear alike. okay so it's very hard to figure out. okay which system is going to be better. at bill of material so here. you are the model is going to be very. lean so the only thing you are looking. at is the setup time cycle time you. don't even have run time typically you. would require that uh the larger Erp. system are going to have at least 20. different layers of different times you.

Can report how you can report the time. the more you are going to grow your. operations you are going to need these. things when you are going to have let's. say the multiple operators operating on. a machine a machine doing multiple jobs. that's when your reporting is going to. be really handy in having all of those. layers but pay attention to the text. that they need to mention so here they. are providing the instructions you need. to add 25 milliliter of the solution in. the five milligram of this powder mix. for 20 minutes okay the reason why we. have to do this is because they cannot. model this process as part of the data. model when they cannot do that you. cannot build the quality step because. this is text you cannot do anything this. is not intelligent okay so that's where. the the lean part of of the data model.

Is so pay attention to how they are. capturing their data elements and how. much text has been captured and what is. being captured inside the text how their. unit of measures are being captured and. what is captured inside that so pay. attention to all of that. but overall if you look at their bombs. they are going to be releasing any. comments guys. you know Sam it's interesting uh I. completely agree with where you're going. with this so the one thing that jumped. into my mind is you know if they have. such a. um. uh complex uh quality module I'm really. kind of surprised to see that the the. kind of closed loop that you would. necessarily expect I mean I kind of get. it from a um the size of system. perspective right in the data modeling. that you already mentioned but if they. have a a. pretty well thought out.

Um Quality module it is kind of. surprising that some of the loops like. this you know like like the. um the information from uh uh uh. material and routing standpoint wouldn't. that there wouldn't be more tightly uh. that it wouldn't be more tightly. controlled or more half more flexibility. in terms of you know inputs and that. things would be relying on you know text. input to. um you know to transfer this uh this. information per job so it's just kind of. interesting to me that if the you know. what I mean it just it doesn't fit right. like that's what I'm struggling with it. doesn't fit so exactly in the kind of. mindset these organizations are going to. take and Dave you have been there right. you have probably uh been part of a lot. of different audits uh from the quality. perspective and you know how audits work.

Right uh you know you are only preparing. for the questions that are going to be. part of the exam that's how audits work. okay yeah so so you are trying to. Showcase what the Auditors are going to. care for and typically they are looking. at the document management system how. well maintained your document management. system is because in average quality. audited we are not going to have as much. background in the data correlations how. the data is being published in your. documentation system so that's where the. real Gap is so obviously when you look. at the documentation management system. it's going to look so fancy and they are. going to approve it. got it yeah I I agree with that I mean. and you see it in all types of uh audits. to your point I mean even outside of you. know typical quality audits I was.

Working with the company not too long. ago and uh they were due for an audit. for one of their certifications and I I. was pretty Blown Away to see that they. they got glowing reviews on their last. audit uh even though when you start to. dig into the actual documentation. there's you know every section was. accounted for but when you dig into the. process behind it the the actual under. tier point the actual underlying. information I mean it was nonexistent. and and and it didn't take a you know a. real bright person like I.E I was able. to figure it out so you know it's just. it's incredible though to your point. where you're paying you know in some. cases a significant amount of money to. have these different types of audits. performed whether their internal. external. and people are literally just kind of. checking the box and and it being very.

Surface level so you know if you're a. company out there that's evaluating. these types of things these are the. types of questions uh and considerations. you should be making for sure. yeah and guys I want to highlight one. point I mean when you prepare for an. exam an audit is an exam an exam is. supposed to teach you the skills. um okay if you learn these skills then. obviously you'll go a long way but if. your goal is just to hack the exam I. don't know how long you are gonna go. okay so always understand the intent of. the exam what exam even if you don't do. well in the exam but you have figured. out the intent behind the exam and you. have Incorporated that as part of your. processes that's where you are going to. become really efficient because the. whole goal of audit is to make you. operationally efficient to avoid any.

Sort of legal risk or the Financial Risk. or the operational risk or the safety. risk for your company that's what they. are trying to prevent but if you are. just you know checking a check mark I. guess for the audit then okay good luck. with that. okay here. um by the way you don't want me to be. performing your audit uh I don't know if. I'm qualified for that or not uh. um so here we have the item name and. item name you can see some of the text. here so now they have embedded the. intelligence as part of that text again. because they don't have that um unit of. measure modeling as part of the data. model. when you are not going to have that your. inventory is going to be all over the. place. so they don't really have the real. traceability as one of the solution. built. but they are selling in the medical. device and former space which is just.

Mindblowing. okay now when you look at the real. document. change notification and when you look at. the the requirements for the audit to be. honest okay you are going to see these. things very well spelled out how the. engineering change process needs to be. modeled as part of your organization. they are literally going to have this. step that as part of your ecn you should. be able to create a request a request. should go to an approver uh approval. must be approving so you are doing. everything procedural but you are not. going after the intent of the audit so. that's why the the whole ecn process is. probably Superior than your sap to be. honest okay the way it is model so here. you are going to have the ecn request. and this is probably the best workflow. that I have seen from the ecn. perspective and ecn creates a document.

This is one of the best quality system. that I've seen. um so far and you know the the document. request is going to be the child of the. ECM so each ecn is going to have a. document workflow that it needs to go. through so you have the whole. esignature uh you know of hierarchy. that they are trying to mandate because. they need to make sure that the person. who is actually signing is being. accountable for that specific process. that's how deep it gets in the for. management device space even if you are. let's say printing up PowerPoint that is. also controlled can you believe this. so they have all of this and everything. is so serious and medical device based. uh but for some reason companies are not. paying attention to how the data model. is designed. um. so here are some of the reviews so here. we are the reviews coming from the.

Medical device company 11 to 50. employees Jennifer. uh is the reviewer so here the Jennifer. is saying Jennifer would benefit from. improving is the ability to create both. corrective action and nonuh conformance. records from a customer complaint so. even the customer complaint itself has a. workflow it can you customer apps. typically create a lot of different. records as part of your customer. complaint if you are going to look at. you know even accomatica or infor there. are going to be at least 10 different. objects that you can create and she is. talking about only two so obviously the. user would not know why retraceability. is not there or why a user is not able. to create these actions on top of uh. documents such as your customer. complaint but the reason why they are. not able to do it is because they have.

Flattened their data model significantly. because they were in the QuickBook space. and now now if they are trying to scale. all of these steps it's not going to. scale because your foundational data. model is weak so that's why she is. struggling but they don't have that and. they'll figure out some sort of hack. there in producing that but again. they'll miss something else I guess. uh currently the software only allows. the creation of one or the other but not. both however all records between. complaints corrective actions and. nonconformance are linked through the. daisy chain scenario as part of the. daisy chain scenario your complaints. corrective actions and nonconformance. they need to be linked so somehow these. guys have figured out how to link them. but when I talk about the traceability. this is the traceability that I'm.

Talking about every single business. documented object in a real Erp system. is traceable as well as connected that's. the traceability that traceability is. going to be lost here because they don't. have that supported as part of the data. model. Andy Dave any comments. nope. um. okay so now Jennifer also failed and. Again Jennifer is not probably going to. be technical here so she's saying it can. be awkward when retrieving records. during an audit. yeah I can imagine because you don't. have the real traceability uh there are. some yeah go ahead Andy I was gonna say. paperbased manual qms system so there's. not really even a quality system at all. no no they are definitely quality system. ND I don't know why they're reading that. um. oh it's allowed us to move from exactly. okay I'm sorry yeah they have very. strong qms system no questions oh okay.

Yeah. yeah uh all kinds of ISO certification. 21 CFR part 11 at the bottom or 21. CFR. 211210 and 820.. yeah they are doing fairly serious stuff. I'm telling you like yeah super serious. stuff yeah yeah perfect for FDA. exactly exactly. exactly. um I wish there was a compliance of. which EAP system they used uh to test on. the medical device to be honest I would. like to know that. foreign. so here the calibration module was the. most difficult for us to implement as it. operated well in differently so that's. the learning issue I guess that's really. and again you know this is the simplest. Erp system that you can find to be. honest this is difficult and this is the. problem with the customer to be honest I. don't think the the platforms can be. blamed just because they don't have as. deep experience with data modeling and.

Obviously they don't have budget for the. Consulting either and that's why there's. a real Gap and that's where these. Solutions really fit in the ability to. easily manage our document control. auditing uh nonconformances corrective. actions uh preventive actions complaints. and calibrations in one location all of. those are really part of your quality. module to be honest all of these feature. sets the more linking you are going to. have it gets fairly deep the way the. linking works for those so they are. going to have really deep linking for. each of these objects but not for the. Erp data objects. uh people with manual uh electronic. system consumption record storage I. don't have anything there uh yeah. everybody's sort of buying this for the. regulatory audit uh otherwise they would. manage probably on paper it's helping.

Them with the audit and that's why they. are they are buying these systems. um one more review this is coming from. Aviation Aerospace very similar. requirements fairly serious. um 200 to 500 employees usually company. yeah yeah uh one plus year but I can. almost guarantee that this is probably. they used it for qms not really for the. Erp. um so here to be honest we do not use. all the modules within qt9 uh but the. ones we do use allow us to get buy and. pass our qms audits. um for the power user like myself that. wants to extract detailed performance. data you will have to extract the data. and pull it into Excel and manipulate it. to get metrics you need what you see is. what you get no customizations. whatsoever. again this is really an app it's not. supposed to be an Erp system but they. are selling it as the eerp system uh no.

Over D notifications or escalations uh. you know again whatever you have that's. what you get. um. uh obviously they have very complex. quality requirements some of these. quality requirements may not be there. even with the larger Erp systems so you. need to use a dedicated to Quality. module such as your qt9 to be honest. okay because qt9 is supposed to be a qms. system uh with a real eerp system. um maybe that could be a direction that. you may want to be okay so it does it. can be a standalone quality system or. possibly API into another Erp. uh that would be my understanding I. think they started as qms and then. developed the yeah the whole idea of. this solution was really to be the qms. but the way QuickBooks works as we know. you can create whatever you want on top. of QuickBooks. um because there is no sort of financial.

Control there. um that's why these guys are able to. create a lot more in general. um. so here if you have more than one. process approver and one of them. approves the action the other approver. cannot go back and make changes uh you. are logged out I think that's the. problem with the user uh that is the. compliance process in my opinion. um I think as part of the compliance. processes only one user can check out at. any point of time so that they can. maintain the version who has made what. change you have the complete. traceability so this is really a. training issue here uh not really the. system issue. um. and the other approver uh approved the. risk and I could not make any changes uh. no customer. uh customer customizability I think. that's what she uh or he meant to say uh. and forms lots of tabs on the. nonconforming product and corrective.

Action forums and you cannot get rid of. those tabs you need so even the tabs. that you don't need you cannot simply. hide them that should be very easy. process in most CRP systems. um you cannot even hide the tabs. absolutely no customization no filtering. of overdue items in Pareto analysis you. can filter open items close rejected. submitted and deleted but nothing to. tell you if an item is passed you no. email notifications If an item goes past. you. um so a lot of problems here overall. from the data traceability perspective. uh this is coming from Information. Technology and services uh unable to. perform text searches okay so this is. another problem that you are going to. get you are not able to perform the. searches because your fields are not uh. indexable when you are going to dump the. intelligence inside your description.

Field your searchability is lost you. don't have traceability you don't have. such ability and that's why she is not. able to perform your search is going to. be extremely weak and search defines how. quick your operations are going to be so. your data entry is going to be slower. your search is going to be slower so I. don't know what benefit you are really. getting from these Erp systems except. your audit. well the list of functionality on the. previous screens certainly implies a lot. of stuff but. yeah that's what it employs I mean if. you think it's a wonderful thing isn't. it marketing is a wonderful thing you. said it right. great qms for a small company. exactly. um so here we are looking at Main Market. 51 2000 employees to be honest. QuickBooks is not necessarily designed. for such Market segment uh they cannot.

Support the transactional workload it. should not be used in that market. segment but seems like they have used it. uh okay and they have used it in 2022. you can only have one module open at a. time unlike Erp system you are going to. have all of these issues you will not be. able to explain why uh the reason again. data model. um you know uh it can be a little. frustrating if you uh want to reference. a control document but you have to close. out of the record you are working into. Open Door control again a lot of. different oneto-end scenarios and. retraceability tools. um so that's it guys. um do you guys have any comments I have. some comments here which I'll open up. um go ahead Andy Dave. so in Andrew's jumping in with uh. marketing like Siri here piece like they. like their bagels with everything so. exactly tend to agree with that after uh.

After seeing this his next comment uh. though. um I'm not sure if you were able to find. this or not uh Sam but um. regarding that review that was stating. limited flexibility and specifically the. con of not uh of cannot customize which. Tabs are shown can you speak to whether. this product has rolebased access or. what the security is if you can't. disable anything is there any. finegrained access control. um interesting comment. um and depending upon what you mean by. security okay and what you mean by the. Control Data access if you you are going. to have two different ledgers your. accounting is going to be completely. different from your quality and. operation Ledger you are breaking the. rules right there. if you had just one system and you had. the complete traceability end to end. then it's a different case but again.

Depending upon what architecture you. want to build and how your data access. is being transferred to different system. and what is going to be requirement from. the audit and the regulatory body. perspective what they care for so again. you know for the most part if you look. at any of the Erp systems they are going. to have that finegrained access as part. of the same system you know for most of. the finance and operations workflow but. that might not work for every business. um Dave over to you whatever followup. you might have yeah now uh one of the. things that kind of struck me about. going through this. um you know with the again kind of. seemingly that the reviews are are. talking about the quality uh the quality. management module and all of that it. struck me odd that the kind of initial. marketing uh that first slide that we.

Saw that initial marketing piece didn't. really touch on the quality at all so. when I was doing uh just a bit of. background on it it looks like they've. kind of segregated that out so they have. like three different websites that. they're marketing they've got their you. know kind of document control business. they've got their qms business and then. they've got you know the CRP platform. business. um all of them obviously having some. overlap but I did think that was. interesting you know it's it I I think. we talk about it often but um and it's a. lesson to be applied to many businesses. even outside of Erp Solutions but you. know know your lane stick in your lane. grow in your lane uh you know it it's. it's interesting to see so many. solutions try to be so many things to so. many people and if you're really amazing.

At qms in this case stick with it. continue to iterate on that and and you. know answer some of what the users are. are requesting so. um it's interesting I'd like to see some. more you know deep functionality on the. the qms side of things even though I. know uh you know this is an Erp Focus. show so. is all part of Erp. it's supposed to be. yeah. um sorry Andy more comments. um you know I mentioned that I'd ran. across this qt9 well it's interesting. name. um a month or two back and the first. time I ever came across it but. um you know when I did the research it. came across as basically designed for. a long run make the stock type. manufacturers not product type. manufacturers not custom not changes the. same thing over and over again and being. and targeting life sciences and totally. makes sense. yeah. um Dave more comments.

Uh no not really. um like I said I I just interesting uh. you know another interesting solution to. see uh the difference of how they're. positioning where versus where it seems. to fit. um it'd be it'd be great to find some. more information out about I think to. your point earlier Sam about you know. how companies are really utilizing this. uh I don't see companies that are. um heavily relying on the qms to be. integrating with QuickBooks or Sage 50 I. mean those companies don't seem to fit. that model so again for me this this one. kind of lands a bit in a weird place. um you know with the information. provided I wasn't able to find much. history on this uh solution either I. don't know if either of you were able to. find much history on it but uh I think. that might you know shed some light on. on how it's gotten to be where it's uh.

Where it is today. and I'll tell you a little bit about the. market landscape in terms of how other. companies operate to be honest okay they. are always going to have a dedicated. hums system in general even if they have. slightly Superior Erp system underneath. um and that's how these guys must have. started that okay they were sitting on. top of your Sage 50 as well as. QuickBooks but even if you look at in. four epic or you know they might have. their own qms system but the qms system. may not be as robust or it's going to. require a lot more configuration in. general so what companies might do is. they might uh get a slightly simpler. document management system as well as. the quality management system because. they have to go through the audit and or. sometimes you know there's going to be a. speed Factor because the investors are.

Going to have milestones and they need. to move fast uh and it might take. forever to learn slightly more complex. systems right so they'll get a quality. system completely siled document. management system completely siled they. might not worry about the actual Erp. operations of the financial operations. and they'll try to pass the audit using. that and after that they'll figure out. the Erp if they pass the audit because. you need to pass the audit you need to. go through FDA you need to sell your. devices and then you are going to get. money. and then you're going to have to be sort. of got certified again next year exactly. exactly in the whole cycle of life I. just could say and then start to repeat. the cycle that's right rinse and repeat. yeah exactly exactly and that's where. the qms is always slightly more.

Standalone in general uh because you are. probably going to run out of options. even if you're buying slightly bigger. Erp systems you you'll probably require. a specialized qms system. for your document documentation. management needs and again documentation. management is a different process in. that you don't have to involve the. actual Erp processes but when you look. at the actual Erp operational workflow. that's where your Erp is going to be two. different things in general. okay any other comments guys before I. close no all right guys that's it for. today if you're doing for the first time. this was part of our industry series for. which we meet every Tuesday at 5 30 PM. Eastern so make sure you guys are going. to be here next week we are going to. come back with another solution on that. note thanks everyone for cheering in.

tonight. thanks Sam thanks everybody