By Dom Tyler — Founder, RecyclyERP
I didn't set out to build an ERP specifically for the ITAD industry.
At the time, I had acquired a bespoke ERP business. The business was capable of building software around complex operational requirements and I was looking at different vertical markets where that capability could make a real difference.
That's how I came across IT asset disposition.
An ITAD business approached us and as we started looking at the industry, I did what I normally do when I'm trying to understand a new market. I looked at the businesses operating in it, looked at the software available and tried to understand where the gaps were.
What I found was interesting.
There were systems available, but I didn't see anything that really stood out as being built specifically around the way these businesses actually operated.
That gave us a problem worth solving.
Understanding the problem before building the software
One thing I've learnt from working with businesses is that the software is rarely the difficult part.
The difficult part is understanding the business properly.
I tend to look at a business like a jigsaw puzzle. You start with the pieces you can see, but there are always pieces missing. Until you understand how those pieces fit together, you don't really understand the business.
That's particularly important when you're dealing with complex operations.
You can't simply look at one part of the process and build software around it. You need to understand what happens before it, what happens afterwards, what information is required and why each step exists in the first place.
So that's what we did.
We spent time on the shop floor asking detailed, relentless questions to understand every step of the operation. By mapping out the exact pain points frontline staff faced daily, the real opportunity became clear.
The complexity was the opportunity
ITAD is a complex industry.
There are a lot of moving parts and the businesses operating in the sector need to manage those moving parts as one operation.
For me, that complexity wasn't a reason not to build the system. It was exactly why I found the problem interesting.
I've always enjoyed taking something that is complicated and finding a way to make it much simpler.
My mind naturally hyperfocuses on complex systems. Where others see an overwhelming web of requirements, I see a puzzle to be solved, streamlined, and simplified until it runs effortlessly.
That's really what I wanted to do with RecyclyERP.
Not build another generic ERP and ask an ITAD business to adapt its operation around the software.
Build something around the operation.
From an ERP business to RecyclyERP
As we understood the industry better, it became clear that this needed to be more than a project for one customer.
There was a wider opportunity to build a proper, purpose-built system for ITAD businesses.
So we developed the solution and eventually established RecyclyERP as a separate business focused on that market.
The thinking was quite simple.
If we could take the complexity we had spent time understanding and turn it into a system that made the day-to-day operation easier to manage, we would have created something genuinely useful.
That has remained the principle behind RecyclyERP.
Why the industry knowledge matters
Building software is one thing.
Understanding why a business needs that software is another.
The more time I spent working with ITAD operations, the more I realised that the value isn't simply in having software with lots of features. It is in understanding the problems those features are supposed to solve.
That's why the process of building RecyclyERP has been as much about understanding the industry as it has been about developing the technology.
We didn't start with a list of features and try to find a market for them.
We started with a market, understood the problems and built the system around them.
That's an important distinction.
What I wanted RecyclyERP to become
I wanted RecyclyERP to take complicated operational requirements and make them easier to manage.
That doesn't mean pretending the underlying business is simple.
It means the software shouldn't add unnecessary complexity to it.
For me, that's the real test of good software.
You can have an incredibly powerful system, but if the people using it have to fight with it every day, something has gone wrong.
The challenge is to understand the complexity well enough that the person using the system doesn't have to carry all of that complexity themselves.
The software must do the heavy lifting in the background so the user experience stays completely frictionless. If an operator on the floor has to think twice about how to navigate the screen, the software has failed.
That is what attracted me to the ITAD market in the first place and it is still what interests me about RecyclyERP today.
I didn't build RecyclyERP because I thought the world needed another ERP.
I built it because I could see a complicated industry with a problem worth solving and I believed we could build a better way of solving it.