I get asked this all the time: “Can we really change our business processes fast?” The answer is yes, but only if you are ruthless about scope. I worked with a distributor who wanted to fix their order-to-cash cycle. They had a legacy system that was 15 years old and held together with tape.
They wanted to do everything at once: inventory, accounting, sales, HR, and CRM. I told them to slow down. “Let’s pick the one thing that is bleeding the most cash,” I said. That was their returns process. It took 12 days to process a return. That is absurd.
Stop Trying to Boil the Ocean
The biggest mistake in any business change project is trying to fix ten things at once. You end up fixing nothing. For this distributor, we focused entirely on returns. We wanted to get that 12 days down to 48 hours. That was the single goal for our ERP Consulting engagement.
We mapped out every step. The customer called a sales rep. The sales rep emailed the warehouse. The warehouse inspected the item. They filled out a paper form. Then it went to accounting. That paper form sat in a pile for three days. Paper is the enemy of speed.
- Step 1: Give the customer a direct phone number and a web form to initiate a return.
- Step 2: The warehouse logs the inspection result in a tablet, which updates the system immediately.
- Step 3: The credit is automatically issued once the inspection is complete.
We removed the sales rep from the approval loop. They were a bottleneck. The reps were happy because they stopped doing paperwork. We hit the 48-hour target in exactly six weeks.
The “Stop Doing” List is More Important Than the “To Do” List
We made a list of five things they would stop doing. No more filing paper returns. No more phone tag between departments. No more approving credits from a manager. Trust your team to do the right job. When you remove the approval steps for simple, routine tasks, your whole business speeds up.
- Identify the single process that frustrates your customers the most.
- Set a specific, measurable target for improvement (e.g., reduce time from 12 days to 2 days).
- List the steps you can remove entirely, not just improve.
That was the most successful ERP Consulting project I ever ran, because we were focused on a concrete, painful problem. Pick one thing. Fix it fast. Celebrate the win. Then move to the next one. That is how you build momentum without burning out your team.