Quentin Ramon: 0:01

A lot of our added value in the year 2010 had to be rethought. So we started with a couple of apps and then every time today we have something that we have to solve. Our first reflex is to say, Is there an option in Odoo to do it? Is there an app to do it? Today, if you can, you can not look at the company in one way. That's why when huge multinational KPIs, you have a lot of accountants that are making figures and reporting and so on and so on, that is something that you cannot do in a small company with digital tools like having a digital twin, you can. If you look at our Odoo, you look at our company, Odoo in fact, had the same effect on our company than the smartphone and Apple with their apps had on the cell phone.

Richard Shall: 0:46

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Planet Odoo. My name is Richard Shaul and we're here for another episode with one of our customers, Decatel. For today's episode, I have the pleasure of welcoming Quentin Ramon, deputy general Manager at Decatel. With him, we will discuss his company, what they do, and how they are able to shift their focus on improving and growing their business by going fully digital. Are you ready? Let's go. Hello, Quentin. Good afternoon and thanks for joining us today.

Quentin Ramon: 1:11

Good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation.

Richard Shall: 1:14

Of course. I'm really excited to have our audience listen to more about the story of Decatel. So why don't you just kind of tell us who are you?

Quentin Ramon: 1:20

We are a family company that was established 30 years ago approximately. And the current owner, Bernard Decant, Decatel Decant, is the son of Michel Decant, who was active in exactly the same kind of company. It's just another name. So the family is present since 60 years. And what we do is, in fact, we do a lot of things. We are a selling company. We represent some other companies, some suppliers, and manufacturers of, initially, electrical components. Okay. And we are specialized in the railway sector. So that is really the DNA of the company. So every time you see in Belgium a train, there is something about or coming from our company in the train. And when I say that you see it, it's in fact everything that you don't see in a train because the electric components, of course, are hidden. So there is nothing fancy, there is nothing beautiful. We have beautiful products. Of course, thanks to those products, you have electrical mobility. That is that is possible, but you don't see them. So they are. I'm touching wood here, but you never see a train taking fire. It's thanks to that kind of products. We are just cutting and cutting the current that is approximately what those components are doing.

Richard Shall: 2:39

Okay. And so you're completely 100% focusing on railway, right?

Quentin Ramon: 2:42

The DNA is is certainly oriented railway. But today we are speaking more and more about electric mobility. Electric mobility is, of course, railway, but also cars.

Richard Shall: 2:54

Right.

Quentin Ramon: 2:54

Funny story about our products or kind of you are not putting a car, electrical car, you don't put it on. It's done by itself and you hear a little click right and that click is the kind of products that we are selling. That is, yeah, putting the voltage on the electric car. So that is the click that you hear is what happens when a component like we sell is, is taking action. Okay. So of course we are diversifying ourselves. Right. And in parallel of this, because Bernard Decant is the best seller man I ever met in my life, he would sell. Yeah, a free go to a to a guy in the North Pole. Okay. And of course, given that amazing thing that he can do selling things, the company is doing much more of this. If you go on our very old website, which is not yet the Odoo website is not yet live, you see a lot of things, but they are always or 90% of the time related to electricity, right? So other clients of us are infrastructure like Ilya Reza, those names of electrical infrastructure companies. But I would say that if you are looking to our turnover, maybe 80, 85% is railway where you have a sncb Alsthom Infrabel.

Richard Shall: 4:18

Okay. So then if you remind me again, what year did this company start?

Quentin Ramon: 4:22

It turned 30 in 20. So it's 1991 I think.

Richard Shall: 4:29

Oh okay. So yeah, a little bit younger than me. Great. Good to know. And so what is the biggest challenge that the cartel has had over the last 30 years?

Quentin Ramon: 4:37

I could answer in two parts. Great. The first challenge is just being competitive in a very competitive world because thanks to the when Internet arrived, when selling on Internet arrived, the clients were able, in fact, to find what we were selling everywhere in the world. And because. Today, you can just buy in the United States and you have the goods within a week. A lot of our added value in the years 2000 and 2010 had to be, yeah, rethink what is our added value. And our added value is that when you buy something to Decatel, when you need an electrical component, you have service. When you call, it can be Bernard who takes the phone. So you are directly dealing with the guy who owns the company. And when a client, if a client would would call here and would have Fabien on the line, I'm sure he would be absolutely 100% focused on the client. Right? So that was the first challenge. And then when we because that was absolutely amazingly done and today we are still we are increasing. We so we have a very interesting growth that was possible thanks to the fact that we we had that add value of service of answering so that our clients were still buying in our company because they know that if there was a problem they had some something, or someone in line. What you don't have if you buy on Amazon or something, that was the first one and then the second one since the last years was everything was done. The digitalization within Decatel was a pen and a sheet of paper. That was the digital tools, right. A few years ago.

Richard Shall: 6:21

Not so digital these days.

Quentin Ramon: 6:22

Yeah, it was. And then the amazing thing is we have approximately ten people who are working at Decatel and the average if you don't take me and the last guy who was hired, I think the average age is 50 years. Okay. So telling to people who are working with paper and a pen and the computer where you have outlook or one of your competitor like Dinosaur, right? Yeah. No, it was it was Sage, if I can mention it. Yes. It was really dinosaur. And they were working with that tool since or they have been working since, I think it was ten years. So it was absolutely amazing challenge of onboard those people to the story of, you know what, we will create Decatel as a kind of digital twin. Okay? That will help us to follow up on everything from everywhere in the world and to just to tell you the way we decided. So we had we had three choices. We of course, we are very proud to be Belgian. So we had definitely odoo in our target list of, of new ERP. And then we had Microsoft, and then we took a purely 100% homemade. So I don't remember the name of the company, but they were creating an ERP from scratch only for you. So you, you bought the code and then you just had to use it. And the way we decided so was, was based on the price was based on what we will have is the company that we will choose secure enough if they are going bankruptcy. I'm talking about that third company. What happens if you buy something and then you don't have any service anymore? Right. And Bernard and I were sitting it was an evening we were sitting on the meeting room and we said, okay, we have we have two, three choices. We know everything now. We know how it will work. We know the price. We know everything. And then the third one was quickly pushed away. But then we had, Yeah, Do we go with a new unicorn or the well-known Microsoft? Right. And then he said, okay, you know what? I don't want to decide without your meaning. And so let's just take a sheet of paper. We write what we think on it and we just give it to the other. And then we look at it. And both our choice were odoo for a lot of reasons. And in fact, it was, it was a decision based on things that we in fact didn't know at the end. When we look at the at the story, a lot of a lot of one one and a half year after, in fact, it was the best decision. But we didn't know at that time. We just based it onpricing the fact that it was Belgian, the fact that it was a new way of maybe working, that we heard a lot of good things about it. But when we see now how it changed, completely changed the DNA of what we do and everybody from the upper management to the guy beneath who is packing goods. Right. Is using it on his phone, on his computer. It became the digital DNA of the company. And. Right. We know that in the beginning and it had never been possible with a Microsoft or another because in fact, we worked incrementally. So we we started with a couple of apps. And every time today, every time we have something that we have to solve, our first reflex is to say, is there an option, you know, do to do it, is there an app to do it and that's how you grew. I'm yeah. And today. I just counted it before the podcast. I think we are at 24 apps that we are daily using, right? And we started with a couple of less ten apps. It's really everything they are. So it's really the possibility of growing with the company. And so today I would not be able to say if we are of course we are growing commercially thanks to our clients, but in the company I could not say if our digitalization is going thanks Odoo or with Odoo, you know. Right? Is it because we want to digitalize that we found in odoo what we need? Or is it because it exists in odoo that we find it and we use it? You know, it's the chicken or the egg. Sorry, but it's definitely working. So that was the second challenge. And after we had our go live on the 1st of January 2022, you should ask my friends, there is no drink that we go or when I eat with them that yeah Odoo is just they always are kidding to say do you have something with odoo to say to add or to do? Because I'm, I'm really using it everywhere every time and it becomes yeah. A digital partner of the company.

Richard Shall: 11:14

AI get that. a lot of employees get some complaints from their significant others or even their friends because we're always talking about odoo even outside of work to the benefit or detriment, who knows? But to kind of take a step back because of everything you said is quite fascinating. So the main issue that you had before was, one, the competitive market you're in, but also that you realize that you need to find a new tool to run the organization. Is that correct?

Quentin Ramon: 11:38

Yes, to be really honest. In fact, the reason why in the beginning, Bernard said we have to change is that the version that we were working on on Sage was not supported anymore.

Richard Shall: 11:50

Classic scenario.

Quentin Ramon: 11:51

Classic. In such a little company, you don't have the time, in fact, to take a step back and to say, you know, guys, are we working correctly or not? Or do we use the correct tools? Right. I would say that you always have or you often have an external something that happens that forced you to change. Right? So the decision to change was not in fact was not strategic or something. Yeah, we have to digitalize, but it happened afterwards.

Richard Shall: 12:20

An external factor.

Quentin Ramon: 12:21

Exactly. And again if we... I'm not paid to say that, but I'm absolutely convinced of what I say. We would never ever have the speed of digitalization that we have today if we didn't have that tool. Because as I said, it came because of the fact that you can without paying. We are a small company so we can not pay there. And there are a lot of tests of things, right, with all the others, and I don't know very well the market of the ERPs. But if you compare the three that we had in our portfolio of choice, never with the two others, we would have grown that much digitally speaking. It's amazing, really.

Richard Shall: 13:04

To kind of analyze the original decision process, that third homegrown company, one of the hidden costs that could have occurred from there is the fact that if it was developed just by one person and you aren't being challenged enough to kind of fit your workflow into the software itself. Well, in that instance, that software will be fit to you, so you've actually paid more to customize it and configure it the way you work now or back then at least, which gets even more complicated when if you want to make a change, that's the only person you can go to.

Quentin Ramon: 13:32

I love that because something that was not easy in the beginning, even more for the people that were using the old ERP.

Richard Shall: 13:40

Right.

Quentin Ramon: 13:41

Was to I'm doing a yes, how can I do a within Odoo? It's not that. No. In fact, you have to do B, you will arrive to the same result but doing differently. And why did we succeed? It is thanks to the people. Thanks to their mindset, they are not grown with an iPhone in their hands. And they changed. They changed the way they do it. That's good. And in fact, since we had to click to say, in fact, all the other apps that we will add, we will not try to make it the way we did it before. We will just look at how does it work within Odoo and do it like this, because in that way you don't have to customize anything, right? You just download the app, you see how it works, you adapt your process, and it works. Simple last example the way we are following up the holidays. Before, it was with an Excel with a paper sheet name. When what is the motive is vacation or right doctor thing. Okay. It's just yeah we we downloaded the app. We looked at how it works and today everything we are not using it the same way. We are not working the same way but the result is the same. We are following up the holidays of the people. It's just the mindset. If you have that mindset, in fact, you will ease your digitalization, it will be quicker, and it will be more efficient because you will not try to make a square enter in a circle. Right? You just become the circle. And it, it goes just Yeah. Into it.

Richard Shall: 15:17

Are you sure you don't work at Odoo? Because that's essentially the quick start methodology that we've been trying to and working very hard to maintain and implement across the consultants' team and trying to work with clients to get that kind of same mentality. So I guess the question is, was this something that we implanted in your head about this approach, or is this how did you come to the realization that this is the right approach for you and Decatel?

Quentin Ramon: 15:41

I realized it's a couple of months after Go Live, they showed us the graph that you have with the satisfaction of the client.

Richard Shall: 15:50

Yes.

Quentin Ramon: 15:51

When we were at the deepest dissatisfaction. Yeah, deepest because it was a couple of months after the implementation open and I was just thinking about I had so much questions about everything always. How does that work? Where can I see that information? And then, in fact, I started to just to solve those issues, I was always starting to ask myself the question, is that information that they are looking for important?

Richard Shall: 16:17

Right?

Quentin Ramon: 16:18

Yes or no? And then every time it was no, I just said, don't look at it. It's it doesn't matter. And then a couple of weeks after, I think it just came with we had two periods, the period before the implementation, and then we were definitely not ready when we had to go live, and some elements were or came after of changing this or changing that, the layout and so on. And after that time, I just realized by if you just let the flow like in the sea, if you, if you want to swim. Yeah. In the other way then than the waves you will have a lot of problems doing it there. Just let the wave go and then see where you arrive if it arrives correctly. And if you maybe you don't have all the information and when it that you had before or maybe you have other information just look at not the way you do it that is important. It's the result. Right? And just look at the result. Is it okay? Yes. Okay. Okay. I don't have the information on the same place, but change management is if you work on change management, the implementation or the quick start like we did, it is just amazing when you convince the people that they just have to look at it another way it works. And then I.

Richard Shall: 17:29

Mean, that's the hardest part about implementing.

Quentin Ramon: 17:30

It was the hardest part. I think if I had to, to look at an energy scale from 1 to 100; 0 to 100, I think approximately between 50 and 75 was just change management. The rest everything is in the program, right? Just do it like this. And if I had to do it another way or if I had to redo this, I would just focus on change management to say to the people, to make them realize the first thing that you have to understand is that you will not work the same way than yesterday. As soon as they have the click, they say, okay, it's not ,that problematic.

Richard Shall: 18:07

And did you give them some context as to why like why was important to change the mindset or why we had to approach it differently? Because that's usually the hang up that people have when it comes to new tools and taking a different way.

Quentin Ramon: 18:22

No, I was not thinking about that before, so I never explained the why because in their head, the why was only we had to change because the other version is not supported anymore. Okay. So that was their why. And like I said, we made on the 1st of January, we made the go-live of Odoo, and there were so many things that were not ready, so many. When I realized today our post-go-live implementation, I think the first 3 or 4 months, we are still today seeing fires that were created at that time where we say, why did we do it like this? Right? Because we were trying to reach the old way of working. And after that, they clicked. They changed their mind. So I didn't have to explain them. The why, the why was in the beginning because we have to change. And after they just realized and today, I love when people of our team are coming to me or to the team in the team meeting, and they say, Guys, I have found something in Odoo If you do it like this, like this, like this, do you know that you can, for example, an offer you don't have to do it via email anymore. You can just do it via odoo and they create just maybe too much detail example. But they created an article, a product within Odoo that is called offer. It's a generic article and they just they just changed what is written. So you can the description, the description, and because it's the description that is written on the paper, on the pdf that you, that you, that you generate.

Richard Shall: 19:55

Right.

Quentin Ramon: 19:55

They don't see that it's the generic article it was because. They just they realize how Odoo is working. And before, all the offers were not made via Odoo because the articles are too much changing and different.

Richard Shall: 20:09

Like independent.

Quentin Ramon: 20:10

We didn't had the time to create every article for every offer. It is only when we had the order that we create the article. So the offer process was not really yes via email, but it was sometimes just an email for that product.

Richard Shall: 20:25

You have a separate though.

Quentin Ramon: 20:26

Yeah. And then we entered it in Odoo. What definitely changed that day And it's just the guy who came and said, You know what? In fact, if you create a generic article, you can do everything, and you have a digital twin of your offer process, what we didn't had. So it's just a guy who yeah. From the team who said, Yeah, you know what, Why not? So to answer your question, did we explain the why? No, Because even we didn't know. We knew that we had to change, right? We did it. And that's part of that mentality of just looking at what we have to do and let's do it with Odoo. How does it work? Let's adapt ourselves. It worked.

Richard Shall: 21:08

Right.

Quentin Ramon: 21:08

And step by step, week after week, you are adding apps, you are using more right than before. It's really amazing how you how I realize I'm coming from a very big company. I work ten years in a multinational where it's you only work with SAP, and sap is sap.

Richard Shall: 21:27

Yeah.

Quentin Ramon: 21:28

I'm sorry for them,

Richard Shall: 21:29

But so are we.

Quentin Ramon: 21:32

But when you are entering in a small company, you are saying, Oh, I realize why they have that kind of structure of of IT tools. And you are. And it's a strange, strange feeling, but you are missing sap and then you, you make the decision to change, to go with the new way of working. Odoo in fact had same effect on our company than than the smartphone and Apple with their apps had on the cell phone it's just it's using the new way of working you can you can do it from everywhere you can do it you can do everything with it.

Richard Shall: 22:07

Right.

Quentin Ramon: 22:07

If I don't know how you decide within your company to develop 1 or 1 new app or not, but in fact, if you stay like a company like we are by saying, okay, we want to do something, is there an app that exists and not making it implemented because we just have to use what exists then you find it. And that was also something absolutely, absolutely amazing. What accelerated the amazing way that our use of Odoo was new pricing. Yeah because imagine yeah it was it was amazing from, from day one to day two we had to pass the ability to yeah. To download any app, additional app. And in the beginning, it was always yeah, it will cost too much. Or again I'm speaking about the holiday app. You are not earning more money because you are using it or not. It's just easier for the team. But you don't earn money.

Richard Shall: 23:03

But you're saving time. Which is money.

Quentin Ramon: 23:04

Yes. But in a small team you're not really saving time. Sure, managing the holidays of ten peoples is 20 days per people is 200 days a year. It's nothing for someone who has to do it in Excel. So Excel or Odoo, it's it's more convenient and it's now more digitalized, so we can make a better follow-up and etc. You can you can lose it. You can erase it without paying attention.

Richard Shall: 23:28

Several different copies.

Quentin Ramon: 23:29

Exactly. So we didn't in the previous way of pricing it, we had to pay more. And yeah, it's not worth it to spend €16 per. I don't remember the pricing exactly, but at that time, it was just No, let's, let's do it. Not now. And when the pricing changed, it was, wow, we had a Ferrari and within the Ferrari we had a small engine, and the new pricing was just now we have the full engine, right? You can use it that that had really great effect on the imagine on the digitalization because we had. Yeah, more options. More options. Exactly.

Richard Shall: 24:04

And so to kind of give some context because everything you say makes it sound super easy and simple. And so to give a more background to our listeners, exactly what is the workflow in the back end that you are able to implement in Odoo? So I mean, I understand you are a distributor mostly. You don't do the manufacturing, so I imagine it's what purchasing, receiving inventory, shipping, and invoicing.

Quentin Ramon: 24:26

For most of our projects, yes. So within Odoo, but we have two things that we are like I was speaking about add value in the beginning,

Richard Shall: 24:33

Right.

Quentin Ramon: 24:33

Where we had to find add value was service. So we are not box movers. We do not buy a pen and sell a pen in two ways. So firstly, we see or we are just following up the industrial projects. We have engineers that are on the field. They say, okay, in fact it's not really a pen like this. You have to make the color a little bit different. You have to make it automatically switching on or off or something. So really not the design, but the implementation of all the projects that we are following up or saying to an engineer, no, you think that it's a pen that you need, but in fact it's, it's another kind of.

Richard Shall: 25:11

A Pencil?

Quentin Ramon: 25:12

Yeah, a pencil, for example. So that is really the added value. So that is now followed up thanks to the, the offers that that generic article offer where we can write anything that we want. Sure. Okay. And the second add value is that sometimes we are selling a complete system, so you have to buy A, B and C to make D. So we are using also the app of manufacturing where we have that kind of articles where you have A, B and C that are creating D, We are also making some kits. So in manufacturing, a train is in a huge building, of course. So when you need something, you're not able to go back to the warehouse to take things. So we are also preparing and creating some kits where the guys who are working are starting with a box of tools of components that they will need. And logistically, it's it's difficult to be sure because of course, if you are not giving to the guy the correct components, he could if he realizes he is losing a lot of time. If he doesn't, he's mounting not the correct pieces on the train. We are not only just buying and selling, there is really a kind of we are a part of the technical and engineering teams of our clients. Okay.

Richard Shall: 26:37

So and these manufacturing building materials, are they level? So you just have several layers within or is it just a simple one-layer manufacturing?

Quentin Ramon: 26:49

When it's more complicated? We have some sub-suppliers. So we have in fact, and the people who are using Odoo will see what I mean. But you have three kinds of you have a manufacturing, you have a kit and you have a sub supplying. Right. We are using not for the same, for not, not three times the same for the same articles, but we are using the same the three different ways of working. Okay. When it's really, really complex. One example we are also building some cabinets for the lightings in some tunnels and all those cabinets, of course, are assembled by sub-suppliers. Right. But the design of it was done with our engineers. So. Okay. And that is also something very funny about it because before everything that was not in our flow of buying, selling like you said, was done still manually. It was even not going in the system. Yes. The buying the the sub articles and selling the others was in it. But all the the flow that was between was just not existing. It was existing. We did it but it was not linked in our system. So you were not able to say that, for example, the guy who mounted. Product, right? The invoice that you receive from that guy, you were not able to say that it was related to product. You just had an invoice and we knew, of course, that it was related to it, so we paid it. But today it's it's all linked. That's why I'm talking about Digital Twin. Yes, you if you look at our odoo, you look at our company and the other way around and that is that is amazing because for for a guy like like Bernard who looks at it at a at a very high level, he's able to spot some things that are not working like it should just because he has the tool to read it.

Richard Shall: 28:40

Right.

Quentin Ramon: 28:41

It was the problem was was existing before, but he was not able to quantify the problem and to see what it is today. If you look at on the screen, you cannot look at a company basically meaning you can you can not look at the company in one way. That's why in huge multinationals, you have KPIs, you have a lot of accountants that are making figures and reporting, and so on and so on. That is something that you cannot do in a small company, right? And you cannot look at it in one way, right? With digital tools like having a digital twin, you can with one huge. And that was something we realized after one huge difficulty is like always in digital if you have garbage in, you will have garbage out. So, in the beginning, to have the people understand that please, when you are creating something, when you are entering contacts when you are doing something in Odoo, please respect the processes. And it was in the beginning really, really difficult. We were using a lot of time to clean to see if it was okay. We had double creations of, of, of the same things. That was really, really difficult to people that were using the previous ERP that we had like just a writing machine. The objective was just creating a PDF where the information was written on because everything was paper. Yeah, now everything is digital, so it's not the report that has to be correct. It is what is used behind to make that report. That has to be correct. And that is also a mindset that has to change.

Richard Shall: 30:14

It's really cool that you mention it because essentially the Quickstart team goal is to help set up odoo the system as quickly as possible so the business can kind of alleviate the stress of the administrative work and the general day-to-day so that our businesses, our clients can essentially focus on growth and evolution and finding those pain points that are preventing them from moving forward. So you've essentially encapsulated the entire kind of goal and dream of what the implementation methodology is looking for. Now to kind of continue down that path of kind of context. So you've explained more about your workflow, the business and what you do, and so you've shifted your mindset to be focusing on, let's say, standard. Let's do it the old way. So now tell us, how long did it take you to go fully implement Odoo with that kind of mindset?

Quentin Ramon: 31:04

Do you want me to exclude the the time where we didn't catch that? Because to give you the full picture, we took the decision, I think it was around October, it was somewhere in October. And then the time that because of course when you validate the offer from Odoo, you have to wait at a guy his put on your. So there is some. Yeah. So I think we started to really with the meetings 1st of November somewhere it's a public holiday but the day after. Sure. Then we had November and December of the pre-configuration of Odoo with with the team was not yet involved. We involved them in the question of what do we have to do with that and so on and so on. But they were not involved in the, in real implementation configuration, not the implementation configuration of Odoo. And at that time we didn't have that mindset, was not realizing how productive it would be to have it. But in two months everything was configured. So we started 1st of January 2022 with completing, not using the old version, and using Odoo 100%. And I would split the six months that are between 1st of January and June, for example, in two equal periods. The period where we just tried to run to say okay, we had to run a business here, we have to run that business correctly and we have to do it with a new tool. And then like I said, after a couple of weeks or months, we had that click. In fact, we have to stop to swim the other way around. We have to go with the wave. Let's do it. And from that point, I would say there is a kind of exponential increase. So it's halfway of trying to catch the afterglow live where we maybe implemented 50% of it and then after again three months, but where we did so much more as from that click. So if someone has to or is hesitating and it says we are now approximately 1st of May, he could be live the 1st of July and by the end of the year he is fully digitalized. Of course, a company like we are, I'm not speaking about big, bigger companies or where the industrial process is very complex because that is also something very funny. Like I said, I'm speaking about odoo to my friends, to everyone, and my brother-in-law who is the managing director of a company that is manufacturing some concrete.

Richard Shall: 33:40

Okay.

Quentin Ramon: 33:40

He also made decision. But the implementation was longer not because of the mindset, but because of the complexity of his of his process. And I would say that if you have the mindset, even if you have very complex way of working, just let's ask the question to your Odoo consultant. How could Odoo do it if it's okay, or if you agree that you will reach the same result with Odoo, just do it. And every time you ask the question, how can I do it with odoo ask it the other way around. How do I have to do it with Odoo and then do it? It's not always possible, of course, but it will solve 80/85% of your problems. And then you will just focus on the all the others. We had to. How do you call it when you when you ask a modification of the code and.

Richard Shall: 34:31

Customize or develop. Yeah.

Quentin Ramon: 34:32

We have two of them. And you know what Now that we have them, I'm saying in fact it was not necessary. We we ask them in the beginning of the process because we thought it was the only way to reach it. Right. And today, because we are just playing with it and playing with all the apps we know that we have today two ways of reaching it because we have the customizing and we have the standard way of using it. So it's um, I think people have too much the they think that the machine will do it for them if they or they will try to get the machine doing it the same way they did it or they do it instead of just saying, you know what, look at how the machine does it. If it's okay for you, just do it like this. Yeah. And that is it really changed everything in the way we use it internally.

Richard Shall: 35:23

I mean, that's essentially what we have to remind consultants on a regular basis, is that a lot of businesses, their operations only exist the way they do because of the tools that were available to them when they initiated the business. And so change the mindset to focus more on how maybe Odoo does it to standardize or any software really is probably the easier way to kind of adopt a new platform. And you took away you took the question right out of my mouth like what feedback or advice would you give other businesses who are looking to implement Odoo or anything like Odoo? So before we kind of close off here, do you have any other last advice, maybe something on change management or something that I missed?

Quentin Ramon: 36:01

I think we we discussed a lot of things by summarizing. Maybe I will I will remember something. But indeed, working or putting the energy in the beginning on change management is crucial. Yeah, trying to always ask the question the other way around by saying this is the result I have to achieve. How does odoo does it? And to which result he arrives? Does it match what I need? Also ask you the question by what do I don't do today? Or what am I not doing today? That's the correct way to say it that I maybe should do. For example, reporting or so something that we didn't talk about is the by paying attention of garbage in garbage out, of course. But the analysis of everything that can be analyzed by odoo. So the last thing that you could ask yourself is what is the thing that I'm not doing that I can do now because I'm using it or for doing what I have to do in my business? And secondly, is there something else without doing anything, just by clicking on analyze or there are so much questions we asked Francois, our consultant. Thank you. Just saying now that everything is implemented, how can I do this? And every time in the beginning I thought he would say, Yeah, you need that app or you need to do this and this and this. And in fact, it was just clicking. It already exists. So sometimes and even in companies like, like, like our company. Where. Where we didn't grew up in a digitized world.

Richard Shall: 37:35

Right.

Quentin Ramon: 37:35

The question is, sometimes we just don't know that it exists or that it's possible. And there are so much things that we are now following some KPIs. But it's it's a large world word. Word. Sorry. Um, but there are so much things that we are following up. Thanks to it. One example. Are we sure that everything that we need or that we will need in the future is ordered? Right. That was something that was impossible to see before. It was yeah, you could see it, but you had to take three excels. You had to make lookups you had to do or it was not done through Excel. You had to print everything for the boss that do it, show, show it to the people. And then there was an amazing loss of time by doing this today, it's just you just filter, you make some filters and you save your filters and then just great, put it to your dashboard and you can follow up. So that is, I think, also the advice. But after the implementation. Right. Be aware of always remember that there is certainly something that you can do more and that you didn't do before.

Richard Shall: 38:46

Okay. So the depth is there.

Quentin Ramon: 38:47

Yeah.

Richard Shall: 38:48

Well great. Thank you for teaching us and forming us about how to handle this and the implementation process. I'm sure many will find it very interesting, especially when they're looking to implement it on their own. So thank you again for coming in today. Appreciate it.

Quentin Ramon: 39:01

Thanks for the invitation and the very interesting discussion.

Richard Shall: 39:04

Absolutely. Have a great day.

Quentin Ramon: 39:05

Thank you, Richard.

Richard Shall: 39:06

Well, everyone, that was a lot of information. I hope you appreciated discovering the story of the train components industry and the way Decatel handles everything with software and technology as much as I did. If you'd like to know more about Odoo and its community, I would recommend you check out our other episodes. Thank you again for listening and as always, stay awesome.