Episode #17
Running an ERP Consultancy in the Age of AI with Matt Cull
What if an ERP programme could be delivered in weeks rather than months? In this episode of The Catch Up Podcast, host Philip Blackmore speaks with Matt Cull, founder and chief executive of Vannda, about a career that began with two university dropouts and a factory lab bench, and now spans global Microsoft Dynamics 365 transformation programmes. Matt explains why client-side ownership, executive sponsorship and proper backfill decide whether a project succeeds, and why the partner relationship works best as a tennis match rather than a handover. The conversation then turns to AI. Matt argues the traditional Dynamics consultant role is almost gone, describes standing up working proof of concepts in hours, and makes the case that smaller businesses can now buy enterprise ERP and CRM at a fraction of the usual cost. He also takes the security question head on, at a point when 51% of UK firms fear staff are feeding company secrets into unauthorised AI tools, according to research reported in September 2026 . (00:00) - Welcome to The Catch Up Podcast (01:52) - Dropping Out, Factories and a Break in Finance (04:47) - Riding the Baan Wave into Contracting (07:49) - Why Winning a Client's Trust Is the Hardest Part (10:53) - What a Breadth of Industries Teaches a Consultant (14:20) - Who Really Owns an ERP Programme (18:56) - How Vannda Started with a Project Rescue (23:38) - Scaling from Mid-Market to Enterprise Clients (27:05) - Focusing on Media and Agency Transformation (28:30) - Will AI Replace the Dynamics Consultant (37:59) - Cloud Fears Then, AI Fears Now (50:55) - Business Central, Automation and the Next Three Years Matt Cull: Matt Cull is the founder and chief executive officer of Vannda, the London-headquartered consultancy he co-founded in 2020 with Shaun Balding to design, deliver and rescue complex Microsoft Dynamics 365 programmes. His route into enterprise technology was anything but linear, moving from two abandoned university courses and factory work into bookkeeping, then into Baan ERP in the Netherlands in 1996 and a long run as an independent Dynamics contractor. Before Vannda he held Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations solution architect and consulting roles with organisations including Scania, Pinewood Studios, IBM and LexisNexis, covering multi-country rollouts. Vannda now runs teams across the UK, the United States, Mexico and Singapore, works with multinational and Fortune 100 clients, and is building a specialism in transforming large media and marketing agencies while productising fast, AI-assisted Business Central and Customer Engagement implementations for smaller organisations. Episode Insights: The client-side team is eternally underestimated, and the cost of backfilling the people who make decisions is the line item most sponsors forget to budget for. A good partner relationship behaves like a tennis match, where each side returns the ball and someone is empowered to call it in or out. AI is already compressing implementation timelines, taking simple deployments from months to days and changing what an implementation partner is actually selling. The bigger threat to ERP careers is the disappearance of the entry-level process work where consultants used to learn systems thinking end to end. Building specific AI skills before asking questions gives better answers and burns fewer tokens than open-ended prompting. Action Points: Fund the client side properly: Price the client-side team, not just the partner quote. Work out which roles need backfilling and what that costs before the business case is signed. A programme with no decision-makers available is a programme that will drift. Set your governance ground rules early: Agree who can say yes, no or not good enough, and how quickly. Treat it as a tennis match where both sides must return the ball. Escalation paths should be tested before the first difficult decision arrives, not during it. Ask AI first, then act: Before you approach the market, brief an AI tool on your size, legacy landscape and constraints, and interrogate the problem. Build your own client-side assistant to support requirements, partner selection and planning. Do everything you would normally do, but faster and better informed. Write skills, not just prompts: Matt's Mexican property law example shows the value of building a focused skill before asking the question. A narrow, well-contexted skill reduces token spend and cuts the risk of a wrong answer. Treat skill-building as a core team capability. Close your shadow AI gap: Set clear rules on which tools staff may use and what data can go into them, and consider a gated or self-hosted model for sensitive work. This matters commercially, not just legally, given that 51% of UK firms fear employees are feeding sensitive data into unauthorised AI tools . Pair the policy with training so people stop working around it. The Catch Up Podcast brings you candid conversations with industry leaders, consultants, and change-makers from the Microsoft Dynamics and tech ecosystem. Hosted by Phillip Blackmore, Sales Director at Catch Resource Management, each episode dives into the real stories behind business transformation, career pivots, and scaling success. Expect thoughtful interviews, practical insights, and honest reflections. Brought to you by Catch Resource Management , a leading UK recruitment specialist for Microsoft Dynamics and ERP talent, this podcast is your inside track to the people shaping the future of enterprise technology. Tune in for new episodes and stay ahead of the curve. The Catch Up Podcast is produced by Story Ninety-Four in Oxford, UK.
