Benoit Gagnon, President

“An implementation project is not an IT project. It’s a human project,” says Mr. Gagnon. “We affect the day to day work of our customers. We affect their processes. We affect the main tool they work with.”

That belief shapes Concerti’s approach from the start. Implementation is treated as a change management challenge first and a software challenge second. Everything else follows from that principle.

Based on the south shore of Montreal in La Prairie, Quebec, and now expanding to Calgary, Concerti has spent over two decades refining this model across Canadian manufacturing and distribution sectors. As an Epicor Certified Platinum Partner for both Epicor Kinetic and Prophet 21, it supports nearly 130 customers nationwide. Recognition as Epicor ERP Implementation Service of the Year in Canada 2026 by CIOReview, Canadian Partner of the Year 2025 and North American Marketing Excellence Award winner in 2024 and 2025 reflects a delivery model built around operational fit, phased execution and customer ownership long after ERP go live.

The Right Tool for the Right Project

Concerti’s delivery model starts with something unusual in the ERP world—restraint.

Qualification is led by a senior sales engineer or a seasoned professional with knowledge of Epicor and the manufacturing and distribution environments where Epicor Kinetic and Prophet 21 operate. They assess solution fit, identify gaps and determine whether an opportunity should move forward.

“Our goal is to be 100 percent successful in all our projects,” says Mr. Gagnon. “With some customers or some prospects, we will just say, ‘No, we are not a fit.’”

Part of that judgment is knowing where the software belongs. Epicor Kinetic is built for discrete manufacturers. Prophet 21 is built for distributors. Concerti does not stretch beyond its purpose.

Staying focused on two industries has built deep recall. Concerti has seen the same pressure points repeatedly, like disconnected systems, fragmented reporting, manual data entry and teams making decisions from incomplete information. That pattern recognition allows precise qualification and helps steer customers away from a scope that would jeopardize success.

Designing the Right First Step

Once a project moves forward, Concerti begins with a deceptively simple question—What is the customer’s operational reality today?

Some customers have mature processes and integrated systems. Others still operate through spreadsheets, manual coordination and disconnected workflows built over years of operational habit. Different environments need to be approached differently to avoid disruption occurring before the software even has a chance to deliver value.

Some people during the project will be reticent to change. It’s normal. It’s part of the ERP implementation. We actively build room for that resistance into our design from day one.

For instance, a business running an aging Unix ERP cannot be treated the same as one using QuickBooks and Excel. A planner using scheduling software absorbs change differently than one working from a whiteboard. A company performing 50 intercompany transactions a month has different phase one needs than one performing 1,000.

Software capability is broad. Customer readiness determines the path.

Concerti calls this philosophy crawl, walk, run. It prevents customers from attempting dashboards, automation, advanced planning and scheduling and full transformation all at once.

“Yes, we will get there,” says Mr. Gagnon. “To be successful, let’s do one step at a time.”

Phase one focuses on foundations and the most urgent operational needs. Advanced functionality follows once people, processes and data can support it. This protects the first phase from becoming a transformation overload. It gives the business room to learn the system, stabilize new processes and build confidence before moving into deeper automation.

Reducing the Customer Load Without Removing Ownership

Most Concerti customers are SMBs. Their employees still run production, manage purchasing, close the month-end and serve customers. ERP arrives on top of daily work.

Concerti reduces that load through a library of preconfigured assets, such as workflows, security models, dashboards, reports, queries and work instructions, for common manufacturing and distribution scenarios. Units of measure, countries, payment terms and freight companies arrive preloaded. Invoice automation begins with a tested workflow. Proprietary add-on tools extend the library further.

But Concerti is careful not to allow customers to outsource the project entirely to them.

“It’s the customer’s project,” says Mr. Gagnon. “If the customer is not involved enough, when they go live, they will not master their project. They will not master the software.”

Users are expected to understand the decisions being made, the workflows being introduced and the system’s logic before go live. Success is measured by whether the customer can confidently operate and evolve the system once the consultants step away.

Managing Resistance, the Most Predictable Risk

Every ERP project carries a predictable risk that users will compare the new system to the old one and assume the new one is wrong. They know the legacy screens, shortcuts and built habits around the old system’s limitations and now mistake those habits for requirements. Their first instinct is to recreate the old system inside the new one.

Replicating legacy software inside a new ERP creates cost, delays and technical debt that compounds with every future update. Best practices get buried. The business changes platforms and keeps the limitations it was trying to escape.

“Some people during the project will be reticent to change,” says Mr. Gagnon. “It’s normal. It’s part of the ERP implementation. We actively build room for that resistance into our design from day one.”

Change management prevents that outcome. Consultants explain why processes change, how one department’s data affects another and why ERP requires a broader field of vision than spreadsheets. An Excel file may work for one user, but purchasing cannot see inside it. In an ERP, an engineering decision flows through production, purchasing and finance.

Concerti also identifies internal champions early, people with credibility, ERP familiarity or the ability to keep colleagues focused on solutions when frustration surfaces.

Building the Team Behind the Implementation

Concerti’s method depends on people. A new implementer may spend six months inside Concerti before becoming fully billable. For many professional services firms, that investment is hard to justify. Concerti treats it as essential preparation for the customer experience it wants to deliver.

“Investing in ourselves is key,” says Mr. Gagnon. “Build the team for where we want to go, not where we are now.”

Epicor certification is a starting point. Concerti then layers internal training, mentoring, coaching and knowledge sharing on top of it, supported by a dedicated HR department focused on hiring, retention and career development.

"An implementation project is not an it project. It’s a human project. We affect our customers' day-to-day work. We affect their processes. We affect the main tool they work with."

“Employee retention matters because judgment leaves when senior people do. Losing a senior implementer means losing institutional memory that no certification can replace. Without my staff, project delivery becomes incredibly difficult. The human element remains essential in this work,” adds Mr. Gagnon.

What customers feel, in the end, is consultants who stay calm under pressure, build trust and keep the project together when it gets hard.

Proof on the Shop Floor

A sheet metal subcontractor producing small steel parts for machine builders handled thousands of work orders across multiple systems. Large orders required weeks of estimation and planning before reaching production. After Concerti implemented Epicor, the customer received one of the largest orders in its history, a complex multilevel assembly spanning multiple plants. The team entered the order, ran material requirements planning and received requirements, schedules and routing in about an hour. Work that once took two weeks reached the floor the same day.

An aeronautics division of Airbus produced monthly reports for its parent company using data scattered across engineering, production, purchasing and manual entry. One report consumed two weeks of manpower. Epicor’s streamlined reporting decreased the work to two hours.

Neither outcome came from software alone. Both depended on disciplined implementation, centralized data and users who understood the system well enough to keep it running on their own.

Concerti’s Own Transformation

Over five years, Concerti doubled its employees, projects and revenue while maintaining its quality first approach. They run Epicor in-house alongside CRM, integrated payroll, invoicing automation, bank reconciliation automation and document management. Modernizing under its own growth pressure gives the advice its consultants offer a different weight. When a customer asks how to accelerate bank reconciliation, Concerti answers from experience.

Prophet 21 opened a new distribution market. The Calgary office extended it into Western Canada. Platinum certification across both product lines recognizes a partner that has matured in two directions at once. Mr. Gagnon was a finalist for AQT CEO of the Year in 2026 and Concerti earned a place in the Epicor Platinum Elite Club for two consecutive years.

Keeping Pace with Technology

AI dominates conversations across every industry and aligning it with business priorities is crucial in any ERP project. Keeping pace with new developments can be challenging, but at Concerti, identifying what AI genuinely delivers for customers has become a core priority.

“With the vast spectrum of possibilities that AI opens up, Concerti’s role is to focus squarely on what will be most effective for our customers’ day-to-day business,” says Mr. Gagnon. “AI is a topic that comes up in almost every discussion. There are fundamental steps we need to take before arriving there. If a company does not have a clean, structured database, we cannot expect AI to deliver effective results.”

An ERP project is fundamentally a human journey before it is a software deployment. That philosophy shapes how Concerti approaches AI integration. It is not designed to replace human expertise but to give employees the tools and insights they need to excel.

Concerti holds a strong conviction that the ERP system will serve as the primary vehicle for AI, carrying both the centralized data and the computing power to drive it. Getting there requires a structured transition, consistent with the “crawl, walk, run” approach that defines the delivery model.

“It is not necessarily the companies that implement AI the fastest that will win,” says Mr. Gagnon. “It is the ones that do it smarter.”

The Durable Truth About ERP Modernization

Software, automation and AI will continue to advance. Concerti welcomes them. But its work rests on people who understand why change is needed, trust the path, own the decisions and move forward at the right pace.

“We take the customer by the hand,” says Mr. Gagnon. “Sometimes it takes a bit more time, requires a bit more money. We believe that is a very important element for success.”

Software carries the data. People drive the change.