Why work with Raiz?

Imagine you're the CFO with a team of five. You've been running the business on QuickBooks for a few years. It started simple: single entity, plain contracts, a handful of customers and vendors.

Now it's complex. You're consolidating multiple entities by hand in a spreadsheet every month. You've bolted on a stack of tools - a billing system, an expense tool, a CRM - and none of them talk to each other. The board wants real-time numbers, and audit season makes you nervous about every manual journal entry.

You need an ERP.

Most finance teams would admit they need a better system, but they've seen what ERP transitions look like. Six to twelve months. Blown budgets. A new tool that's just as painful as the old one.

So when you're evaluating an ERP transition, there are two critical decisions to make.

1. The right ERP platform.
2. The right partner to implement and support the ERP platform.

The platform choice is its own discussion - we cover it in What is AI-Native ERP?. Here, we're focused on the second decision, because it's the one most people underweight. 

Using the MECE principle, the options are:

1. Implement it yourself
2. Implement with the ERP software publisher
3. Implement with a partner 

Let’s unpack the options.

Implement yourself

If you can confidently say "yes" to the three questions below, take on the project. Otherwise, hire a professional.

1. Expertise - Have you implemented ERP systems many times over? More specifically, have you implemented this exact platform multiple times?
2. Time - Even the newer, easier-to-deploy ERPs demand real hours. Can you give the project near-daily attention for weeks to months - and are you comfortable with what that costs the rest of the business?
3. Risk - A CFO of a billion-dollar company once told us you get fired for three things: fraud, running out of cash, and a failed systems implementation. Are you willing to own that career risk with no vendor to hold accountable?

Our advice: don’t do it yourself.

Implement with the publisher

Going direct to the publisher works for many businesses. But understand what you're signing up for. It comes down to one thing: for almost every publisher, implementation is a cost center, not a revenue driver. They're measured on software sales, not service quality.

How it plays out depends on where the publisher is in its life:

1. Early-stage publishers (e.g. Rillet) tend to implement well. They need happy customers they can point to, and they'll often price the work low to win share. The question isn’t about quality, it’s about capacity: a great, in-demand services team is also a finite one. This is a key reason why publishers build partner networks in the first place.
2. Mature publishers (e.g. NetSuite) tend to implement poorly. Reps are paid to close deals, not to make customers happy. The services org is squeezed for margin, often moving offshore.

In both cases, the publisher's center of gravity is the product. A partner's center of gravity is you.

Implement with a partner

Implementation partners exist to bridge the last mile between the software out of the box and how your business uniquely runs.

1. Aligned incentives - A partner sits on your side of the table. Their entire business depends on the quality of the service they deliver to you. The publisher makes its money whether your implementation goes well or not. But not every partner is aligned the same way - watch how they bill (T&M vs fixed, more on this later).
2. Relationship - A partner is in it for the long haul. They take the time to understand your business, and that relationship compounds. They know your instance, your team, and your history. Publisher reps rotate; a good partner stays and becomes an extension of your org.
3. Specialization - Good partners go deep on specific verticals, use cases, or platforms. The publisher has to support every customer; a partner can be expert in your industry, your adjacent tools, and your business model.

Now let’s assume this article has done its job, and you’re convinced to work with a partner. Why work with Raiz?

The Case for Raiz

For years, ERP implementation has run on one model: long projects, big teams, and consultants who bill by the hour. The longer it takes, the more they make - this is a perverse incentive.

We built Raiz to be different. We keep what makes a good partner good - aligned incentives, relationship, specialization - and drop the rest.

When Rillet rebuilt ERP around AI, we built the implementation partner to match: 100% Rillet-dedicated and AI-native. When we started Raiz, we packed up and worked in Rillet's San Francisco office for a month, so we'd know the product as well as the people who build it.

Here's what that looks like. We work across three areas:

1. Implementation - We get you live in weeks, not the six to twelve months a legacy ERP takes. And we don't bill by the hour - you pay a fixed fee. No meter running, no reason to drag it out.
2. Systems management - We don't disappear after go-live. We stay on as an extension of your team, building and improving your finance stack around Rillet. When a customer's FP&A needs ran past what Rillet does natively, we brought in a complementary tool and wired it in. Sales tax requirements? Handled those too. The longer we work together, the more we know your business.
3. AI-native services - We go beyond the general ledger. We ship custom AI agents, workflows, automations, or integrations - scoped with your team - that take work off your plate. It's the leverage of another hire, without the hire.

If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “there has to be a better way,” Raiz is the partner for you. When the time is right, give us a call.

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