Comparesoft Podcast

Rachael Lawton, Head of Estates at the Royal Armouries Museum, joins the Comparesoft Facilities Management Podcast to share advice for new and entry-level facilities managers, and to make the case that you do not need an expensive software system to run an estate well. Drawing on more than two decades in facilities management (FM), from accommodation assistant to leading the estate of a national m...

Aissam Drai, ERP Head at the Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC), talks through his journey of selecting, implementing, and adopting an ERP system. He explains how he runs Oracle Fusion across six countries and 38 legal entities, with more than 25 integrated applications covering finance, procurement, HR, and project and performance management, at the largest broadcaster in the Middle East, and...

Marianne Martin, PPM and Statutory Compliance Manager at First Rail London, joins the Comparesoft Facilities Management Podcast to unpack what it really takes to build and manage a planned preventive maintenance (PPM) schedule across mission-critical sites. With over a decade in facilities management across demanding environments, including Wembley Stadium and rail depots, Marianne is currently re...

Lisa Assiotes, Facilities Manager at Ocado Retail, joins the Comparesoft Facilities Management Podcast to explain how she runs facilities management for a busy retail head office, and why building the right team and culture matters more than any single system. Drawing on 25 years in facilities, from the help desk at Lloyd's of London through corporate, charity, gaming and retail environments, Lisa...

Ibnu Pookkayil, Engineering Supervisor at Gosh! Food, a B Corp-certified food manufacturer in Milton Keynes, joins the Comparesoft CMMS Podcast to explain what running maintenance in fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) manufacturing really involves. Drawing on more than a decade of food-industry engineering, from a large plant in Saudi Arabia to a lean one-engineer-per-shift operation in the UK, Ibn...

Ashley Birrell-Riley, a change management lead with over a decade of experience on large-scale ERP transformations, joins the Comparesoft ERP Podcast to explore the single factor that most often decides whether an ERP implementation succeeds or fails: change management. 88% of programmes with excellent change management meet or exceed their objectives, against just 13% of those with poor change ma...

Josh Clarke, Senior Maintenance and Engineering Manager at Arla Foods, joins the Comparesoft CMMS Podcast to share what good maintenance really looks like in food and beverage manufacturing. Josh runs maintenance at Arla's Aylesbury site, one of the world's biggest dairy factories, where his team handles 500 to 700 work orders a week across processing, production, and a purpose-built energy centre...

Laura Pointer, Founder of Pivotal Project Management, joins the Comparesoft ERP Podcast to explain how she has built a 100% go-live success rate across ERP implementations in oil and gas, engineering, manufacturing and facilities management. In this episode, Laura unpacks what ERP go-live actually means, why most buyers mistake it for the end of the project, and the methodology that has kept her r...

Andy Mellor, Founder of Pragmatic Maintenance & Reliability, joins the Comparesoft Maintenance Podcast to break down what a successful condition monitoring strategy actually looks like, and why so many programmes fail to deliver, even when the right tools and data are in place. Drawing on over 20 years of hands-on experience across heavy industry, including eight years at British Steel and contrac...

Yuriy Zaletskyy, CTO and Co-Founder of Acupower, joins the Comparesoft ERP Podcast to pull back the curtain on ERP delivery: What actually happens once a business has signed the contract and the ERP delivery partner gets involved? Drawing on over thirteen years of implementation experience, including hands-on development and architecture work across cloud ERP platforms, Yuriy explains: What happen...

Christopher Lloyd, Facilities Manager at EssilorLuxottica UK, joins the Comparesoft Facilities Management Podcast to discuss the reality of maintaining over 700 high-street retail stores across fashion and optical healthcare brands. Drawing on over 12 years in retail and wholesale facilities management, Chris explains how FM teams protect the customer experience at scale, why communication and tra...

Adileh Mountain, Founder at Strat Scale Advisory, joins the Comparesoft ERP Podcast to explore what causes ERP programmes to go off the rails, what a real recovery plan looks like in practice, and why field adoption is the make-or-break factor in construction ERP. Drawing on 15 years in construction and EPC operations and her experience leading ERP transformation and recovery work at Deloitte, Adi...

Daniel Hughes, Facilities Manager at a 61-unit industrial estate, joins the Comparesoft Facilities Management Podcast to share how he broke into the FM profession without a degree or traditional career path. Drawing on a career that started with forklift driving and street wardening before a mentor and an IOSH qualification opened the door, Daniel explains what the transition into facilities manag...

John Cusick, President of Echo Park Consulting, joins the Comparesoft ERP Podcast to give software buyers a practical rundown of AI-native ERP: what it is, how it compares to traditional systems, and what to watch out for. With a career spanning NetSuite implementations and subscription billing, John now helps companies adopt modern AI-native platforms.  He explains how implementations work differ...

Lee Wachter, ERP & AI Supply Chain Advisor at Interactive Ingenuity, joins the Comparesoft ERP Podcast to unpack what it really takes for manufacturers and CPG companies to fix broken supply chain operations, make ERP decisions that hold up under pressure, and layer AI in a way that actually delivers value. With senior leadership experience at Olympus and Diageo, work with companies like Pepsi and...

Kerry Boyce, Director of Maintenance at the University of Warwick, joins the Comparesoft Maintenance Podcast to explore what it truly takes to maintain a 710-acre university estate with over 500 buildings, thousands of student residents, and more than a million assets. In this episode, Kerry discusses: The real scale and diversity of assets across a major university estate from research laboratori...

Tanya Last joins the Comparesoft ERP Podcast to explain how an ERP project manager keeps large-scale ERP programs on track from early delivery through to post-go-live stabilisation. Drawing on around 15 years of leading ERP and wider transformation programmes, particularly in complex public sector environments, Tanya breaks down what the ERP project manager role actually involves in practice and w...

Bryan Oak joins the Comparesoft ERP Podcast to explain how ERP Phase 0 prevents scope creep, governance drift and data chaos, and why many programmes struggle before selection even begins. Drawing on decades of advising leadership teams across complex operational environments, Bryan breaks down what Phase 0 actually is, what good looks like in practice, and why organisations often rush into vendor...

James Robertson, ERP troubleshooter and author of The Critical Factors for IT Investment Success, joins the Comparesoft ERP Podcast to unpack what ERP failure really looks like today, and why so many organisations fail to get value from systems that technically went live. Drawing on decades of ERP remediation work and an engineering-led approach, James explains why ERP failure is rarely a software...

Ramzan Amin, Founder and CEO of SIM Consulting, joins the Comparesoft ERP Podcast to explore why public sector organisations are being pushed to replace ageing ERP systems. Rising costs, security risks, and systems no longer fit for modern service delivery are forcing councils and public bodies to move from legacy ERP to cloud platforms. Drawing on his experience as ERP Programme Director at Kent...

Jen Payne, Co-founder of Bright Lambs, joins us to break down the critical success factors behind successful ERP implementations and why so many projects fail before they even reach go-live. Drawing on her Master's research into ERP critical success factors and her experience across manufacturing, engineering, and military logistics systems, Jen explains what matters most in the early stages of an...

Geraint Evans, Field Service Engineering Manager at B. Braun, joins the Comparesoft Field Service Management Podcast to explore what field service looks like when equipment uptime directly impacts patient care. Drawing on experience across industrial service and medical devices, Geraint explains why healthcare field service carries a different level of responsibility, and how compliance, preventat...

Jean-Claude Jobard, former Technical Service Director at Tetra Pak, joins the Comparesoft Field Service Management Podcast to share leadership lessons from 24 years of operating large, distributed field service teams at Tetra Pak, with his experience spanning Europe, Africa, and Asia. Jean-Claude talks about: What 24 years at Tetra Pak taught him about leading global field service teams Why trust...

Debbie Vaughn, Director of Field Services Delivery at Denali Advanced Integration, breaks down why traditional SLA reporting often fails in real-world, multi-site field service delivery. Drawing on enterprise rollout and managed services experience, she explains why communication, transparency, and shared success metrics matter more than speed alone. She covers operational interlocks, OLAs behind...

Project Director and VP of Field Services, Sandy Laird, joins the Comparesoft Field Service Management Podcast to unpack a challenge every fast-moving infrastructure programme faces: quality and reliability versus speed. Sandy talks about: What it really takes to manage 27 projects at once Why limited training time is widening the skills gap on-site Balancing energisation deadlines with installati...