Hosted by Chandra Wobschall and Paul Houtkooper
Hey JDE Connection listeners – Chandra and Paul here!
Sometimes a business trip ends up being about a lot more than airports, hotel rooms, and figuring out what time zone your body thinks it’s in. This episode started with Paul sharing stories from his whirlwind trip across Australia and New Zealand, but before long the conversation turned into something much bigger: what customers around the world are thinking about as they modernize their JD Edwards environments. It turns out that no matter which hemisphere you’re standing in, many organizations are wrestling with the same questions.
Different Countries, Familiar Challenges
One of our favorite parts of this conversation was hearing how similar the discussions were from city to city. Whether it was Melbourne, Auckland, or Sydney, customers weren’t asking wildly different questions, they were talking about many of the same challenges we hear here at home.
For years, decentralization made sense. Different business units solved problems in different ways, adopted different tools, and customized JD Edwards to fit their own needs. Today, however, those decisions can make it much harder to standardize processes, consolidate environments, or prepare for emerging technologies like AI.
It was another reminder that modernization isn’t just about upgrading software. It’s about simplifying the environment so the business can move faster tomorrow.
The Upgrade Cycle That Never Seems to End
One topic kept surfacing throughout the trip, and it’s something we know many of our listeners have experienced firsthand. Too many organizations still think about ERP upgrades as massive projects that happen every three to five years. By the time approval is secured, budgets are finalized, and the project wraps up, everyone is exhausted, and understandably reluctant to do it again anytime soon. That cycle becomes difficult to break.
We spent quite a bit of time discussing what it might look like to shift away from that mindset. Instead of treating modernization as one enormous event, what if it became an ongoing discipline? Smaller improvements. Regular maintenance. Continuous adoption. Less disruption. More value over time.
It sounds simple but making that shift requires something that’s often harder than the technology itself: changing how leadership thinks about investment.
Customers Learn Best from Customers
Another highlight from the roadshow wasn’t a product demo or a presentation deck. It was hearing customers openly share their own modernization journeys.
There’s something powerful about listening to organizations describe what worked, what didn’t, and what they would do differently if they had to start over. Those conversations bring a level of credibility that no slide deck can match. Success stories become practical lessons, and challenges become opportunities for everyone else to learn. That’s one of the reasons we enjoy these conversations so much. Whether it’s at conferences, roadshows, or here on the podcast, sharing experiences helps all of us move forward a little faster.
Practical Reflection
Modernization isn’t really a destination; it’s a habit. Whether your organization is consolidating environments, reducing technical debt, improving governance, or simply trying to make the next update a little less painful than the last one, the goal isn’t perfection. It’s building a process that keeps moving forward instead of waiting years between major leaps.
Sometimes the biggest transformation isn’t the technology at all. It’s changing the rhythm of how we improve.
Midwesternism of the Day
We’ll give you one hint: sometimes a person needs a word that carries just enough exasperation to get the point across, while keeping things polite enough for mixed company. You’ll have to tune in to hear!
Until next time, let’s keep learning, sharing, and most importantly, laughing together.
Toodles!
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