text: How BLD Brands built a business platform with Acumatica ERP – crawl/walk/run style
  Feb 6, 2018 AI, How BLD Brands built a business platform, How BLD Brands built a business platform with Acumatica ERP – crawl/walk/run style
  How BLD Brands built a business platform
  How does a long-term manufacturing executive find themselves in the restaurant business? For Andrew (Andy) Gale, CEO of BLD Brands, it came down to a request from a friend.
  The owner of BLD Brands was looking for the right person to take over operations. There was a catch: that meant leading an ERP implementation as well.
  There was a method to the owner's madness. Gale might have been new to the restaurant business, but he was no stranger to ERP implementations, with a whopping eleven ERP implementations under his belt. He was also an experienced CEO, capable of taking the helm.
  At the Acumatica Summit, Gale told me that he wasn't sure at first about joining the restaurant business:
  I was a little nervous, you know? It's one thing to make air craft engine components and other things. I did a lot of medical device and aerospace and nuclear and that kind of stuff, so now suddenly we're making pizza and burgers.
  But burgers bring their own complexities:
  In some ways it's less complex because of the quality requirements aren't quite the same, but on other ways it's actually more complex. We have 135 stores in 10 states, so the people aspect of it is a little bit more of an issue.
  BLD Brands describes itself as a "diversified investment and operations enterprise." It owns restaurant chains like Spaghetti Warehouse, and supports franchisees in cha
  ins like Hardees and Papa Johns. Ten months ago, Gale joined as CEO, and began the ERP evaluation process.
  The cloud ERP search – the usual suspects and beyond
  Gale reached out to the "usual suspects" he had evaluated in the past, but this time, without any manufacturing requirements, he was more interested in the financials side. But that wasn't the only difference:
  We were really looking at not only the financials, but also kind of an underlying platform upon which to build all of our future activities.