Managing data was a challenge for Alix Muller’s clients.
They owned small- and medium-sized businesses and came to Alix for help. In the mid-1990s, he had only recently launched his career as an accounting and finance professional.
Little did his clients know that Alix also had a long-standing passion for information management systems.
Inspired by the challenges his clients were facing, in 1999, Alix founded Commsoft Technologies, the operating company behind Fidelio Cloud ERP.
Needless to say, ERP systems have come a very long way since.
Given Alix’s unique perspective as a financial professional and founder of a tech start-up, we asked him some questions that may be on the minds of business owners considering a digital transformation.
Our interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Has the pandemic and the increase in remote work made business leaders more receptive to digital transformations and ERP systems?
The pandemic was, above all, a wake-up call for many entrepreneurs, maybe even a brutal one for those who weren’t ready or who thought they had an infinite amount of time to carry out a digital transformation.
Nobody can say that business leaders weren’t aware of the digital tools available. The trends toward digital information management systems and remote work have been evident for years.
If businesses had gone the digital route 10 or 15 years ago, they would have had an advantage during the pandemic.
Today, given the labour shortage and globalization, entrepreneurs have no choice but to invest in a digital transformation. If they don’t, they’re at a disadvantage.
“Today, given the labour shortage and globalization, entrepreneurs have no choice but to invest in a digital transformation. If they don’t, they’re at a disadvantage.”
—Alix Muller
What do you say to business leaders who hesitate to invest in digital technologies (including ERP systems) for fear of a lack of return on investment?
Often, business leaders see digital transformation as an expense rather than an investment. This negative perception leads to a reluctance to act.
If you’re looking at things from simply an accountant’s point of view, it’s a little complicated to calculate the ROI for an ERP implementation - more complicated than, let’s say, working out the ROI of plant equipment that will replace a few employees.
Your ROI calculation also has to include the cost of being late in your digital transformation in relation to your competitors. We have customers who invest enormous sums in technology merely to keep up with their competitors and maintain their market share over the long term.
If you factor in the need to automate certain tasks, the labour shortage and the need to give your employees effective tools, then implementing an integrated management system becomes a practical necessity.
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What are the most common misconceptions business leaders have about ERP systems?
Horror stories of bad IT implementations
There may be a false impression due to the horror stories we’ve all heard about very costly or bad IT implementations - most recently, the debacle at the SAAQ. (The Quebec Automobile Insurance Board’s ill-prepared transition to online services led to major customer service problems at 142 SAAQ outlets.)
Fear of organizational change
But there may also be a fear of changing internal business processes. An ERP implementation forces businesses to reorganize tasks and re-engineer some internal processes.
Entrepreneurs may be reluctant to drive these organizational changes, which some employees may find scary, at a time when labour shortages leave companies vulnerable.
An ERP implementation is not a “miracle cure.” It’s important that businesses take on such a project for sound business reasons and approach it seriously by not underestimating the time and work required.
Underestimating the project
Entrepreneurs have this mistaken impression that the implementation will take place simply and easily.
It’s this underestimation of the work, of the mobilization inside the organization, and of the individual effort each employee must make that leads to these awful stories we hear of problematic implementations.
All change in an organization is complex. There’s an operational side and a human side. Even if the technology is becoming simpler, the human component, with change management, process modification and employee training, remains as complex as ever.
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Which trending technology topics do you foresee having a significant impact on ERP systems in the next 12 to 24 months?
Industry 4.0 and Big Data are, in my opinion, the top priorities in the shorter term.
It’s difficult for an entrepreneur to make sound decisions if they don’t have reliable data. And it’s not an easy task for an organization to integrate all its functions, internal data and equipment data into one system and then ensure that everybody collaborates when using it.
Over the longer term, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to add a lot of value by analyzing all this collected internal data in real time and giving managers useful suggestions.
Moreover, I can see AI taking internal data and compiling and analyzing it along with information from the external environment, like market trends, economic forecasts and weather reports, to give decision-makers more valuable and precise suggestions.
The adoption of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models for ERP software keeps growing. Your thoughts?
I don’t see this growth slowing down. SaaS models have two main advantages. First, they simplify the acquisition and implementation of an information management system.
Second, they have a low start-up cost. The company doesn’t have to make any significant investment in IT infrastructure, maintenance, or the evolution of the software.
Given today’s talent shortage, finding the right people to maintain an on-premise ERP system would be a complicated job.
However, a word of caution, and I said this earlier: Entrepreneurs should not make the error of underestimating the work it takes to implement and put into practice an integrated information system.
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What are the mobility trends in ERP systems, and how does Fidelio consider these developments?
During the pandemic, the world saw how mobility revolutionized the way we work. We were able to make appointments on the phone to get vaccinated and receive text confirmations.
Here at Fidelio, we had a website for customer service and an app to consult real-time data, receive notifications and check stock in real time. We also had an app that made it possible to integrate with other systems.
Everybody witnessed how it was possible to integrate an information management system into the world around us.
For all these reasons and others, mobility will be a key feature in the evolution of information management systems.
Today, I think sending an invoice by mail is an outdated thing. Receiving and consulting documents electronically, no matter where we are - that’s all part of an information digitization strategy that is essential for most organizations today.
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How does Fidelio view customization in the ERP space?
We work very closely with our customers. We adapt our application either in response to their needs or to the evolving demands of the marketplace that influence them.
As a result, we integrate new functions into the application or modify our API so it adapts even better to other products and systems in the market.
As the needs of customers become more specialized, technology takes an even greater place in the management of a business.
But there’s a balance we need to manage. Over time, we can’t become a specialist in all industry sectors. We can’t develop all the functions that are possible to be developed. There’s a balance we work out between our product development team and our customers.
Earlier, we were talking about mobility, customer service, integration with plant equipment to get real-time information on production, and forms that integrate the real-time information required for government programs - all these changes came about as a result of collaboration with our customers.
This collaboration is at the heart of our philosophy of partnership with customers so that today’s application responds precisely to the needs of SMBs.
What are ERP software vendors doing to provide an improved user experience (UX) and an intuitive interface?
One of Fidelio's biggest strengths, and one of its competitive advantages, is its simplicity of use and the intuitive understanding the user has when working with it.
For SMBs, who are our target customers, this simplicity really speeds up the employee training and implementation time.
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What inspired you to employ this user-friendly strategy?
Our objective has always been to serve the SMB.
So, the simplicity of use combines with the relatively low start-up investment, the shorter training and implementation time, and the low maintenance to create an application that makes it easier for SMBs to benefit from a digital transformation.
The cost of data breaches and cyberattacks rose during the pandemic. Fidelio operates in Microsoft Azure’s cloud. Is the application paying special attention to cybersecurity?
On top of the other advantages of a SaaS system, security is built-in to protect against cyberattacks or intrusions.
Azure offers, of course, their own cybersecurity measures, and our development team has also taken special care to develop functions that ensure redundancy, data recovery, backup copies and other related features.
The “CDN Top 100 Solution Providers Industry Benchmark Report” lists Fidelio’s operating company (Commsoft Technologies) for the third year in a row.* Was this a surprise?
Not really. We’re proud of that recognition.
Over the years, we’ve always invested enormously to evolve our application and our technologies. That’s allowed us to stay on top of the pyramid for the last 20 years or so.
When we started out, there must have been 15 or 20 software developers in Quebec. Today, we’re only a handful.
If we’ve accomplished this, it’s due in part to our dedicated and focused team, but also to the partnerships we have with our customers. They really helped us make the software what it is today.
*Rankings are based on revenue figures provided by IT-related companies from across Canada.
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