Share what you know with millions of people

Focus is the best place to turn what you know into remarkable content

×

Matt Birtwistle

Follow Following Unfollow

Director, Entra Solutions

90 points

Matt has 20 years’ experience in the enterprise software market. Having initially started his career as an accountant, he gained his first exposure to ERP working on an implementation for the business he was employed in. This led to a ...

Matt has 20 years’ experience in the enterprise software market. Having initially started his career as an accountant, he gained his first exposure to ERP working on an implementation for the business he was employed in. This led to a move into ERP consulting; initially selling solutions but later broadening out to encompass implementation and project management.

In this time Matt has worked across a wide variety of industries including manufacturing, wholesale distribution, finance, lifesciences, education, entertainment and professional services. Some of the high profile businesses Matt has been involved in have included Harley Davidson, Caterpillar, V2 Music, Smithkline Beecham, Burmah Castrol, Arup and Hays Personnel.

As well as his strong ERP background, Matt also possesses a skillset that includes process transformation, change management, strategic planning, analysis and corporate performance measurement.

Matt holds a Bachelor of Business from the Queensland University of Technology and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia.

» read more » read less

May 17, 2011

Matt Birtwistle and 4 other people answered this question

Which project management software is your favorite and why?

Microsoft Project for management of tasks and timelines. Sure I curse at it for its ability to frustrate, but at the end of the day its so widely accepted and understood by my client base.
Sharepoint for it's ability to have a centralised repository and ... more

Information Technology

Project Management

May 17, 2011

Matt Birtwistle and 2 other people answered this question

What are your greatest project management challenges?

I think Robert puts it well when he mentioned the lack of understanding of what a project manager role is about.
Senior managers cannot abidicate their responsibilities in a project to the project manager. For example process changes that are required need to be promoted and ... more

Enterprise Resource Planning

May 16, 2011

Matt Birtwistle and 4 other people answered this question

What are the warning signs for an ERP project going out of control?

Thanks for taking the time to answer Simon. Particularly liked your last suggestion!

Information Technology

Project Management

April 12, 2011

Matt Birtwistle and 3 other people answered this question

Which factors of organizational culture could affect ERP implementation project?

Hi Tamara,
Strong leadership that is able to demonstrate committment to the ERP implementation project is a key factor to success. Of course leadership is not the same as culture but the way leadership is exercised and ultimately received by employees is evidence of the type ... more

General Management

Information Technology

Enterprise Resource Planning

April 7, 2011

Matt Birtwistle and 7 other people answered this question

Is change management needed on cloud computing software implementations?

The practice of change management is about getting people to move from how they currently do things to a new (and hopefully better) way of doing things.
If in introducing a cloud based solution your business practices are unchanged then change management will consist of ensuring ... more

General Management

Information Technology

April 7, 2011

Matt Birtwistle and 3 other people answered this question

What are some best practices for gathering user buy in while going through an ERP implementation?

Begin by involving key users and staff upfront in your evaluation process. not only will they help you understand your processes and suggest areas for improvement but they will also help define your requirements that you will use in evaluating different software solutions. This is ... more

Information Technology

March 19, 2011

Matt Birtwistle and 1 other person answered this question

What are the most significant benefits of ERP to small manufacturers?

It's tough to single out particular benefits of ERP to a specific industry; however, I'll give it a go!
I'll put my answer to you around the issues that face manufacturers here in Australia. Many of the issues faced here I guess aren't that much different ... more

Information Technology

Enterprise Resource Planning

March 1, 2011

Matt Birtwistle and 1 other person answered this question

What advice do you have for a "technology challenged" company that needs to move to ERP?

Hi David,
It sounds as though you've begun the process of identifying potential benefits. Continue with that thinking but also look into the operations of the business. You should be seeking out those processes that are currently done off system and/or lack integration with other parts ... more

Information Technology

Feb. 27, 2011

Matt Birtwistle and 1 other person answered this question

Project Management Best Practices: What are the top tips for delivering a project on time?

1. Ensure that the senior executive(s) who intially sponsored the project have the means to stay engaged. This means establishing an effective communications strategy that brings all the key players involved in the project into the loop. A classic mistake is to handover responsibility to ... more

General Management

Information Technology

Feb. 23, 2011

Matt Birtwistle and 1 other person answered this question

applications of erp in customer relationship management

Good CRM systems are designed to manage and support customer interactions. These interactions can be via phone, email, fax, etc but will often lead to a transaction e.g. a customer order. Here's how the application of ERP comes into play with CRM. If this can ... more

Customer Service

Feb. 23, 2011

Matt Birtwistle and 2 other people answered this question

What are your Top 3 Project Management "Best Practices?"

Only 3!! Well here's my 3 not in any particular order
1) Be organised - understand what documentation you're going to creat through the live of the project and put a structure in place to manage that documentation. A project is more than a project ... more

General Management

Program Management

Feb. 15, 2011

Matt Birtwistle and 2 other people answered this question

What are the most important change management issues associated with ERP?

The first and biggest issue is getting change management on the agenda alongside the ERP project! My clients are primarily in the small and medium enterprise space and I frequently come across the view held by most senior people in those organisations that the ERP ... more

Change Management

Enterprise Resource Planning

Feb. 15, 2011

Matt Birtwistle recommends this answer by Craig Thielen

Given the supposed improvements in ERP flexibility, is customization still a major problem?

While it is true that ERP solutions have come a long ways over the past 10 years it doesn’t mean that customizations have been eliminated. One thing I have noticed over the past 10 years is that organizations have become more mature and disciplined about ... more

Information Technology

Feb. 3, 2011

Matt Birtwistle and 5 other people answered this question

How can IT project managers engage lines of business?

I'll answer this from the perspective of IT running a project on behalf of the business - just to differentiate from the other issue of how IT generally engages with the business.
My recommendations are:
1. Establish who the key stakeholders for the project are. ... more

Human Resources

Information Technology

Jan. 24, 2011

Matt Birtwistle and 5 other people answered this question

Who should be involved in the selection committee for Mid-Market ERP implementations?

Ryan
An effective selection comittee will comprise of individuals who have a solid understanding of the key business areas of the business. Its not necessary that these people are the department heads but equally its unlikely junior people will have the required depth of knowledge. ... more

Erp & Crm Software.

Jan. 23, 2011

Matt Birtwistle and 8 other people answered this question

Why is ERP change management so difficult?

Michael,
How long have you got?!
Maybe one question is how many times does change management make the agenda of ERP implementations? Its hard not to generalise but many organisations and senior execs believe that its the ERP system that will fix all their problems ... more

Change Management

Jan. 17, 2011

Matt Birtwistle and 6 other people answered this question

What ingredients are important to effective ERP demonstrations?

Jonathan,
First of all good case study with some vety saliant points.
With my own clients I get them to focus on what the mission critical areas of the business are and get the vendor to demonstrate that their system adequately addresses these. Additionally, I ... more

Jan. 12, 2011

Matt Birtwistle answered this question

Looking for a template to help justify the purchase of ERP?

Hi Teri,
Finding a standard template to answer your question isn't going to be easy as most companies have their own formats for evaluating investment cases.
Have you been able to quantify the benefits of your ERP investment? If not then I'd suggest you look ... more

Erp Software Solutions

Jan. 9, 2011

Matt Birtwistle and 3 other people answered this question

What’s a more common mistake: pulling the plug on an ERP implementation too soon or not soon enough?

David,
You ask a tough question! The last 20 years has been littered with examples where in hindsight it would have been better to have pulled the plug sooner - it's just nobody realised at the time.
What I can say is that I encourage ... more

Operations Systems

Software Implementation

Jan. 9, 2011

Matt Birtwistle and 7 other people answered this question

At what point should a small company (2-50 employees) start considering an ERP installation?

John
As others have noted there's no one size fits all answer to your question. However, what I can say is that from a business perspective it starts to make sense when your team starts to replicate data and processes performed in other areas - ... more

Information Technology

Following 3 Topics

Information Technology

Following 0 People

Followed by 8 People

Knowledgeable in 15 Topics

#75 of 822

#34 of 268

Change Management

#2 of 55

Project Management

#22 of 254

General Management

#229 of 1194

#101 of 341

#159 of 636

Information Technology

#481 of 2263

#8 of 37

#25 of 80

Enterprise Resource Planning

#24 of 86

#73 of 194

#279 of 419

Cloud Computing

#245 of 462

#1333 of 2156