How Source works with Salora, the NetSuite Retail experts.

Traditional ERP implementations run six to twelve months and regularly cost six or seven figures. "The traditional methodology, while it works, it's really painful for the client," Nathan says - the client's team still has day jobs, discovery means a week of twenty people in a conference room, and long timelines multiply the points of failure: people leave mid-project, bandwidth dries up, years of bad data need cleansing.

And too often the value never gets captured at all. "A client will do this half-a-million-dollar implementation with another firm, and I ask - can you share the documentation the previous team provided? And they'll say: nothing was given to us. You spent all this money, all this time, and nothing was documented?"

The expert never starts cold. Before Salora's consultants sit down with a client, Source has already done the groundwork: AI pre-interviews with each team member and automated scans of the client's existing systems. "When we go on site to do discovery, we've already done 40, 50, 80 hours of pre-discovery. Instead of walking into a conference room and saying 'tell me about your job', we're asking precise, pointed, detailed questions - 'I saw in your interview you mentioned this very specific manual process. Tell me more.'"

The system scans surface what conference rooms don't. "The client tells me they've got 5,000 customers. The system says they have 50,000 - and 200,000 SKUs, 90% of which haven't been used in five years." And because pre-interviews happen one-to-one, people say things they'd never volunteer in front of a room: the spreadsheet the process actually runs on, the step that depends on asking Susie, the work that happens entirely outside the system.

The loop stays tight throughout delivery. "We have a call with the client on Monday; we go on the call Tuesday and our notes are already updated in real time, and we're asking more precise follow-up questions. With the traditional methodology, I'd finally have transcribed my notes two weeks later."

Nathan describes what changes for the expert once the platform carries the build. The figures below are examples from the interview; delivery time and cost depend on each project's scope.

• •System build: "Via Source, we can configure the system in hours or a day or two, where traditionally it would have taken us weeks."
• •Data migration: "The client doesn't want to pay 30 grand for data migration. If I can do it in half a day where historically it took weeks, that's a lot more value to the client."
• •Integrations: "You can build scripts, workflows, and integrations that would have taken months in a matter of hours. On large projects a client might have 30, 50, 80 integrations - now that's days or weeks, not six months."
• •Commercially: "If the other firms are saying it's going to take 12 months and 300 grand, and we're saying two or three months and 100 grand, obviously we have a serious competitive edge."
• •Client success: clients are inside their own system, with their own data, within the first few weeks - which turns the whole project into UAT and training. "I want the client to be power users as early as possible."

"Previously there was trepidation - 'oh gosh, this is going to be painful.' Now you can see the enthusiasm early in the cycle: wow, we're going to be able to do this this quickly. These pre-interview questions are so great, and we're getting such valuable information."

"They're learning so much more about their business than they ever would have in the traditional methodology. Businesses have more data than ever before - now we can actually understand it, and fix the things they've been trying to fix for 20 years, in record time."

Source's platform is purpose-built for ERP delivery, and the experts shape it: every project they work on sharpens the next. "Every project we do together: what were our misses? What can we refine for the next one? How can we standardise our questions by client, by vertical, by integration?"

And it hasn't made the work robotic - the opposite. "It's really about making it more human and more interactive. I want it to be more personal than it's ever been before. And I think we're achieving that." Consultants spend less time on manual busywork; clients spend less time on data entry. "I want people to spend as little time as possible in the system - and get back to having enough time to think creatively about how to improve the business."

For Salora's experts, working this way means their judgement reaches far more clients - top-tier people, with the platform doing the building around them. "In theory, we're going to be able to do five to ten times more projects - hopefully without five or ten times more headcount. Teams serve many more clients, with the same quality of work and level of detail, on a much more expedited timeline."