Practical Product Management

The ERP transformation segment delivers genuinely useful non-obvious points (do nothing as a viable outcome, vision over feature-checklists, as-is before to-be), but much of the innovation-officer discussion is repetitive and circular with significant restatement.

“Pick 3 good reasons that have ROI behind it and chase those.”

“Do nothing should be a viable, probable outcome”

The clean separation of technical vs. product innovation and the 'don't replace, innovate on top of the ERP' debate are reasonably fresh framings, though the matrix PMO and 10X concepts are well-worn.

“I cleanly separate technical innovation from product innovation”

“Why can't you innovate on top of a system”

Evan is a sitting Chief Innovation Officer of a large SaaS provider with real ERP transformation experience and named projects, a genuine practitioner rather than a career podcast guest.

“I'm the Chief Innovation Officer of AMCS Group”

“with Smurfit Stone, we did that work. We did a full process analysis”

Strong concrete examples appear in the ERP section (Smurfit Stone cost figures, write-down numbers), but the first half relies on vague abstractions and the guest deliberately avoids naming names elsewhere.

“it was costing about $12 and change to bring a load of round wood across the scale... that dropped to about $1.40”

“The total system cost them about $560,000 a year. Net gains on that is over $10 million a year”

The hosts genuinely push back and disagree, sustaining a real debate about skills-based hiring and ERP replacement rather than offering softballs, which elevates the substance.

“I'm going to disagree with you and then I'm going to change the subject”

“Why do you have to refit your entire ERP system?”