From Implementation to Impact: What Most ERP Setups Miss (And How Ops Can Bridge the Gap)

Most product businesses treat ERP implementation—like Cin7 Core—as a finish line. It’s not. It’s the starting point. In conversation with Christo (Fiskal’s COO and former ERP implementer), Jaco unpacks why so many ERP rollouts stall post-go-live. The core issue? Lack of operational integration. ERP systems are often implemented without real input from the teams who’ll actually use them. The result is bad data, broken reporting, and a disconnect between operations and finance. Without a feedback loop that ties daily activity to system configuration, ERP becomes a record-keeping tool—not a decision-making engine. Christo’s view is blunt: clean data is the system. If your stock isn’t right, your margins won’t be. If your POs aren’t closed, your financials are fiction. For ERP to deliver value, it must reflect how your team works—and your team must be trained to work with it. At Fiskal, the goal isn’t to “go live.” It’s to stay live, week after week, with accurate data driving real insight. That’s why ERP must be treated as a living system—continuously refined, with ops and finance pulling in the same direction.

SYSTEMS AND SOFTWARE3PL

From Implementation to Impact: What Most ERP Setups Miss (And How Ops Can Bridge the Gap)

When most companies roll out Cin7 Core or similar ERP systems, they treat it like a one-and-done project.Go live.Train the team. Job done.

But here’s the reality: implementation is only step one. The real work starts once the system is running the business—not just logging data.

In this episode of Fiskal Tech Talks, I sat down with Christo, our Chief Operations Officer at Fiskal, who’s seen both sides of the ERP coin: system implementer and operations leader. That rare combination gives him a unique lens on why so many ERPs fall short—and what to do about it.

Implementation Teaches the System. Operations Proves the Value.

Before joining Fiskal, Christo spent years leading ERP implementations for product businesses—from eCommerce brands to co-manufacturers and importers. Tools like Cin7 Core, Xero, Katana, and MRP Easy were part of his everyday toolkit. But it wasn’t until he stepped into the role of running operations—warehousing, forecasting, supply chain—that he realized how much context is needed to make those systems truly work. He didn’t just want to know where the data was going. He needed to use it. And that’s where most ERP implementations stop short.

What’s Missing: The Feedback Loop

One of the biggest disconnects we see at Fiskal? ERP setups that aren’t built for real-world decision-making. The operations team knows what they need from a system—better forecasting, cleaner stock data, more visibility on margins—but they don’t always know how to get it from Cin7. And if the finance team is disconnected, they get raw numbers that don’t mean much. Bad data in, unreliable reports out. That’s where the loop breaks.

Clean Data Isn’t Optional—It’s the System

As Christo shared in the conversation: it’s not just about having a system. It’s about trusting the system.That means:

No outdated or duplicate SKUs.
No unreconciled stock or unclosed POs.
No mystery journals floating into your P&L.

It means aligning how the system works with how the team operates—and adjusting both when needed.Because if the data’s wrong, every downstream insight—stock counts, landed cost, even margin reporting—is compromised.

Where Ops and Finance Must Align

Christo put it clearly: you can’t run financials without confidence in your operations.

If your stock takes aren’t up to date, your balance sheet isn’t real.
If you’re not cycling inventory or tracking usage properly, your margin analysis is flawed.
If your ERP sync isn’t clean, your reporting’s not trustworthy.

That’s why we focus so much on bridging the gap between ERP setup and financial reporting at Fiskal. Because your ERP is your engine. But your finance team? That’s your dashboard. And both need to be dialed in.

Final Thought: Treat ERP as a Living System

Most ERP issues we see aren’t tech problems. They’re process problems.Fixing them doesn’t mean tearing it all down. It means revisiting how the business is operating—and mapping that back to how the system is configured.That’s what Christo did when he stepped into operations. And that’s what we help our clients do every day.Not just go live. But stay live—and get real value, week after week.