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From Heathrow security officer to app builder: what Samit Saini’s story teaches us about modern ERP

A few years ago, a security officer at London Heathrow Airport sat down with his manager and got a quick demo of a tool called Microsoft Power Apps. One week later, Samit Saini had a working prototype: a translation guide that helped officers answer the questions travelers asked most often, in the languages they actually spoke. That single app went on to save an estimated 11,000 sheets of paper, 850 hours of staff time, and around $460,000 that would otherwise have gone to outside developers.

It’s a great story on its own. But re-reading it in today’s ERP environment—where companies are weighing cloud migrations, AI copilots, and the cost of every customization—it lands differently. Samit’s experience is no longer just an inspiring video clip. It’s a preview of how modern ERP actually gets adopted, extended, and made useful inside a real business.

The short version of Samit’s story

Samit wasn’t an engineer. He worked the floor at one of the busiest airports in the world, watching the same friction points repeat themselves shift after shift. When he was introduced to a low-code platform, he didn’t start with a grand transformation roadmap. He started with one annoying problem: officers were burning time and paper translating common questions for travelers.

He built the translation app, then a shift-handover app, then a fault-reporting app for terminal equipment. Eventually he moved off the security team and into IT, helping other frontline colleagues do the same thing. The pattern matters more than any single app: the people closest to the work built the tools that fixed the work.

Why this story matters more in 2025 than it did in 2019

When Samit’s video first made the rounds, “citizen developer” was still a buzzword most finance and operations leaders politely ignored. A few things have changed since then:

  • ERP is genuinely extensible now. Platforms like Dynamics 365 Business Central, NetSuite, and Sage Intacct expose APIs, events, and embedded low-code surfaces that didn’t exist—or didn’t work well—a few years ago.

  • AI changed the floor of what’s possible. Copilots and generative tools mean someone like Samit can describe a workflow in plain English and get a working draft. The skill ceiling dropped; the skill floor disappeared.

  • Budgets are tighter and scrutiny is higher. CFOs are no longer signing off on six-figure customizations to solve five-figure problems. The Samit-style approach—small, targeted, owned by the business—maps directly to how finance leaders want IT spend to behave.

  • Talent is scarce. You can’t hire your way out of every ERP gap. Empowering the people you already have isn’t a nice-to-have anymore; it’s the plan.

What ERP leaders should actually take from it

1. Stop treating “the ERP” as one monolithic project

The most expensive ERP mistakes we see at eIS usually share a shape: leadership tries to solve every problem inside the core system, with the core system’s tools, on the core system’s timeline. That’s how you end up with a $400K customization that nobody uses because the process changed six months in.

Samit’s approach inverts that. The ERP (or the operational system of record) holds the truth. Lightweight apps, automations, and integrations live around it and flex as the business flexes. When you separate “system of record” from “system of engagement,” both get better.

2. Listen to the people who actually touch the process

The translation app wasn’t on anyone’s roadmap. It existed because Samit had stood at that desk and watched the problem happen a thousand times. Most ERP roadmaps are built by people who haven’t closed the books, chased a PO, or reconciled an inventory variance in years—if ever.

If you’re evaluating or extending an ERP right now, the highest-leverage thing you can do this quarter is sit with the AP clerk, the warehouse lead, and the FP&A analyst and ask, “What did you do today that the system should have done for you?” That list is your real backlog.

3. Build guardrails, not gates

The fear with citizen development is always the same: shadow IT, security gaps, data sprawl, a hundred orphaned apps when the builder leaves. Those risks are real. But the answer isn’t to lock everything down—it’s to give your Samits a sanctioned environment. Managed connectors, clear data-access policies, a review cadence, and an owner for retired apps. Gates kill momentum. Guardrails keep it.

4. Measure outcomes the way Samit’s manager did

Notice what Heathrow tracked: sheets of paper, hours, dollars not spent. Not story points, not feature counts, not “platform adoption.” If your ERP program can’t answer “what did this save us, in units a CFO recognizes,” it’s not really an ERP program—it’s a software project.

The finance lens: where this connects to ERP strategy

For CFOs and controllers evaluating whether to stay on a legacy ERP, migrate to the cloud, or extend what they already have, Samit’s story is a useful gut-check. A modern ERP strategy isn’t just about which system you pick. It’s about whether the system you pick can be shaped, quickly and affordably, by the people who use it.

Ask any vendor in your evaluation:

  • How do non-developers extend this platform, and what does governance look like?

  • What’s the realistic cost—time and dollars—of a small change a department head wants next week?

  • Where does AI sit in the workflow today, not on the roadmap slide?

  • How does the system surface the friction your frontline is already feeling?

If the answers feel heavy, slow, or developer-only, that’s a signal. The ERP environment Samit thrived in—open, extensible, close to the work—is the one your business needs now.

The takeaway

Samit Saini didn’t set out to become a digital transformation case study. He set out to stop reprinting the same translation sheet. The reason his story keeps getting retold is that it quietly reframes what ERP success looks like: not a massive go-live event, but a steady drumbeat of small, owned, measurable wins from the people who know the work best.

If you’re rethinking your ERP strategy this year, that’s the bar. Not “did we implement the platform?” but “are our people building on it?”

eIS Business Solutions helps finance and operations leaders evaluate, modernize, and get more out of their ERP investments. If you’re weighing a migration, an extension, or just trying to figure out where to start, let’s talk.