The Systems Owner Nobody Hired.
Between the office manager doing IT on the side and a full CIO, most mid-market companies have a gap: nobody owns the systems. Here's what that costs, and what the person who fills it does.
Joseph Blanchard
Director of Enterprise Applications | NetSuite, Integrations, EDI & Automation | Asheville, NC
About
Making business systems actually talk to each other
Joe Blanchard is Director of Enterprise Applications for a fuel distributor, based in Asheville, North Carolina. He runs NetSuite and the integrations around it, and most recently brought an acquired company onto the platform without missing a close. Before that he spent fifteen years on the operating side of a business, six of them running it, which is why he works where systems meet process. The software either helps the people doing the work, or it doesn't.
Selected impact
Results, not adjectives
- 63%
less order-processing time
through NetSuite automation and integration
- 83%
less manual multi-state excise-tax work
across more than a thousand state-specific mappings
- 0
missed closes absorbing an acquisition
an acquired company moved onto NetSuite in phased cutovers
From the blog
What I write about
Two threads, mostly. The work side: enterprise applications, systems integration, NetSuite, and putting AI to practical use. And life in Western North Carolina: motorcycle routes, photography, and the rescue dogs I foster around Asheville.
Featured
I Foster the Dogs Nobody Else Will Take. Here's What They've Taught Me.
On structure, heartbreak, and learning to be the bridge a rescue dog crosses to reach its real family. What years of fostering the hard cases taught me.
Read the storyYou Can't Buy Your Way Out of Integration Debt
Integration debt is the compounding cost of systems that don't talk to each other, and another app won't pay it off. Here's what it costs and how to clear it.
What Middleware (or iPaaS) Actually Does, Explained Without the Jargon.
iPaaS, connectors, integration platforms, middleware. Vendors say the words and nobody explains them. Here is what that layer does, from someone who runs one, in plain English.
The Deal Closed. Now NetSuite Has to Absorb the Company.
After an acquisition closes, someone has to move a whole company off its old ERP into NetSuite without dropping an invoice. How I did it in waves, and why the best cutover is the one nobody notices.