I'm Noel. Senior ERP and AI advisor. 25 years in this work, mostly on the hard side of it. CIMA. AICPA. Masters in Accounting. The qualifications matter less than the pattern they signal: I came at ERP through the finance close, not through configuration.
The headline number is $700M+ in transformations delivered across EDGE Group, Etihad Airways, ADNOC, PIF entities, DXC, and the UAE Government. The work itself splits three ways:
Programme recovery
Late, over budget, or technically broken implementations. I come in, separate what's real from what's political, and rebuild the plan.
ECC to S/4HANA and cloud ERP
Migration design, cutover, Finance and Supply Chain transformation, data quality.
AI on ERP data
Governance, agentic workflows on BTP, models that sit on SAP, Oracle, or Microsoft foundations without hallucinating the ledger.
I don't sell licences. I don't resell implementation services. My paycheck doesn't depend on Activate hours or BTP subscriptions. That independence is the whole point.
I've been on both sides of the contract. Client buying these systems. Consultant implementing them. The combination is why I see where programmes break before they break.
Sectors: aviation, banking and finance, government, manufacturing, retail, telecom, utilities.
Platforms: SAP S/4HANA and ECC, Oracle E-Business Suite and Cloud, Microsoft Dynamics, IFS, Navision.
Regions: United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Canada, United States.
The work I'm proudest of:
- Etihad Airways SAP Finance transformation. Delivered in 18 months, on time, on budget, no major issues. The reference call I give most often.
- EDGE Group programme work across multiple entities.
- ADNOC Group transformation and learning workstreams.
- Digital DEWA in Dubai: SAP-led digital initiatives that held up under audit and operations both.
- Public-sector aviation data warehouse rebuild. Slow to get moving. Solid once it did.
- Public-sector telecom S/4HANA programme. Heavy governance, real outcomes.
These are the five opinions I'll defend in print. Real positions, not soft takes. Each one has consequences for how I work.
Start with processes, not systems.
Most ERP failures begin in the wrong order. Buy the system, then try to fit your business into it. The conversation should run the other way. Map your processes first. Decide what's broken, what's worth keeping, what needs to change. Then talk about systems. Every greenfield-versus-brownfield debate I've watched go sideways started without this step.
Your SI shouldn't be the one writing your business case.
You need an expert who isn't selling the implementation to write the case for it. That's how $40M programmes become $90M without anyone noticing. The SI's incentive is to start. Yours is to finish. Different jobs.
AI on ERP is real now, and it's moving fast.
Joule is growing by the day. Agentic use cases on BTP are no longer slideware. If your last look at AI-on-SAP was 12 months ago, look again. The board-deck version is over. The shipping version is here. Ignore it and you're on the wrong side of the next two years.
The cheapest consultant is the most expensive one.
Day rate is the smallest variable in total programme cost. A senior advisor at $2,500/day who saves you a six-month overrun is cheaper than a $900/day team that doesn't. Most CFOs work this out only after the second post-mortem.
Walk if a vendor proposes a three-year roadmap before understanding your close.
The finance close is where the real complexity lives. Vendors who skip it are selling a roadmap, not solving a problem. Anyone serious wants to see your close cycle, your reconciliations, and your manual workarounds before they propose anything.
Six moments from the last few years. These are the calls that shaped how I work now.
The 2am call from Dubai
A Supply Chain Manager I'd worked with before phoned me at 2am. I was half asleep. His SAP system had crashed and his warehouse team were writing orders on paper. In 2023.
The consultant before me had set it up wrong. I'm still not sure how they managed it. Two weeks of effectively starting over. The CEO aged five years in that fortnight. The system works now. The lesson was about who you let near your core build, not about SAP.
The retail chain restarting every Friday
I walked into a retail office last year. Their inventory system was so old they had to restart it every Friday or it would crash on its own by Monday. Not exaggerating. The owner pulled out an Excel sheet where he manually tracked stock across 50 stores. I think I made a face, because he started defending it before I'd said a word.
His competition was running machine-learning forecasts while he was counting boxes. We got him sorted. He waited about three years longer than he should have.
The S/4HANA telecom programme
Public-sector telecom. They needed better financial reporting. Every small decision required a committee meeting. What takes two weeks in private sector took three months here. I complained about it to my wife every night for a quarter.
But when we finished, they had something that worked properly. Not a Band-Aid. A real reporting platform. Government programmes test your patience and pay you back in durability.
The aviation data warehouse
Same pattern. Slow start. Heavy governance. Many stakeholders. The final architecture was cleaner than anything I'd have negotiated through in the private sector at the same scale. There's a version of public-sector work where the constraints produce better engineering because nobody can shortcut their way past them.
The Riyadh retail AI inventory project
Retail chain in Riyadh. Their inventory was a mess. We built something that learns from sales patterns and adjusts stock automatically. Still has quirks. Beats having a buyer guess what to reorder every week. This is what I mean about AI on ERP: it earns its keep when the underlying master data is clean enough to trust.
The government chatbot that actually helped
A government agency drowning in citizen complaints. We built triage that handles the simple cases and routes the complicated ones to real people. The staff loved it. They could solve actual problems instead of answering the same five questions for the hundredth time that morning. The point of AI here wasn't to remove humans. It was to stop wasting their time on work that didn't need a human.
“I safeguard your investment from the predictable mistakes that turn ERP programmes into business disasters.”
I won't paraphrase these. They're on LinkedIn in full.
Tareq Ashmawy
Digital Advisor, Department of Government Enablement
Noel is — no cliché — a go-getter with an unprecedented focus on cost optimisation and over-delivering objectives; a mix of qualities that would appear hard for partners or vendors to cope with.
However, I can confirm that my experience with Noel has been challenging, exciting and rewarding.
Adam Boukadida
Chief Financial Officer, Riyadh Air
We had an opportunity to transform the Finance function in Etihad by automating our processes and providing more transparency in financial reporting.
Noel did a splendid job in helping us define and implement our road-map, which included SAP, our ERP, as well as other reporting solutions using Microsoft and automation tools like Robotics and Process Automation.
Andrew Stotter Brooks
Chief Learning Officer, ADNOC Group
His ability to inspire those around him, whether through his strategic insights or his personal integrity, has earned him the respect and admiration of many.
He's not only a role model in the professional space but also someone who leads with empathy, always willing to lend an ear or offer guidance when needed.
Andrew MacFarlane
Managing Partner, Cumbrae Partners LLP (former Chief Investment Officer, Etihad Airways)
Noel led the technical delivery of the SAP Finance Transformation project at Etihad.
This was a very substantial undertaking and it is huge credit to Noel that the programme has delivered on time (18 months), on budget and with no major issues.
Ruchira Dasanayake
Program Manager, Fortude, United Kingdom
His deep understanding of SAP solutions, coupled with his strategic vision, has been truly impressive.
Noel's ability to communicate clearly and deliver results that not only meet but exceed expectations has made a lasting impact. He is a true leader who believes in pushing boundaries.
Farouq Al Kabarity
Digital Design Manager, Digital DEWA, Dubai
Noel's guidance drove significant advancements in our digital initiatives, especially in SAP, improving efficiency and ensuring we stayed ahead of industry trends.
His inclusive leadership fostered a collaborative environment where employees thrived and felt empowered to contribute their best.
Mike Papamichael
PRISM Consulting Services, Cyprus (former Chief Information Officer, EAG)
Noel has been a core member of my IT leadership team in Etihad since 2017.
His functional expertise, combined with his financial accounting knowledge and detailed business process understanding and attention to detail gained from working in Internal Audit are invaluable tools that Noel uses to drive business change and deliver amazing results.
Anubhav Agarwal
HR Executive Leader, Translink Canada
Laying the foundation stones for several key IT efforts to support business transformation across the corporate functions, he has helped steer very successful efforts and investments at EY.
His attention to detail and ex-audit background is an unusual, yet refreshingly formidable combination. With his razor-sharp commercial acumen, he is a great partner to work with all round.
Takhliq Hanif
Head of Architecture, Volkswagen Financial Services
Noel has excellent stakeholder management skills and is a very strong communicator. He has a growth mindset and continually challenges himself and his organisation to deliver quicker and more cost-effectively.
Noel is a very talented negotiator and has a laser focus on cost and value. He builds strong business-focused technology organisations and develops them into talented teams.
More recommendations are on my LinkedIn profile.
- CIMA: Chartered Institute of Management Accountants
- AICPA: American Institute of Certified Public Accountants
- Masters in Accounting
- Big-four Internal Audit background. Risk and controls literacy in ERP design. This is the discipline that catches the controls gaps your SI quietly leaves on the table.
- 25+ years in enterprise ERP and data programmes.
Writing and speaking on ERP and AI across SAP Press, MSN, LinkedIn, IPS, Techbullion, and The Next Disruption. Regular technical content on YouTube.
I also ship products. Two of them are live and used in the industry.
ERPCV: career documents for ERP consultants
erpcv.com. ATS-aware CVs and career packs built for SAP, Oracle, and Dynamics consultants. The product I wish I'd had in year two.
Command Central: implementation tracking for ERP programmes
commandcc.io. PM tool for ERP cutovers and programme governance. Same design language as this site. Same person behind it.
Both exist because I got tired of patching things together in spreadsheets. The pattern recognition from running enough programmes eventually becomes a product.
AI on broken data is worse than no AI. Get the foundation right first. Clean masters. Reconciled ledgers. Documented processes. Then bring in models. Most of what's currently sold as "AI transformation" is model-first. That's backwards.
When I bring AI into an engagement, the order is: data quality and governance first, then targeted agentic workflows on the highest-pain process, then broader rollout. Most clients want to skip steps one and two. The ones who let me run the order get to step three. The ones who don't, don't.
I work across both. They're different animals, honestly.
Private sector moves fast. CEO makes a decision Monday, the project starts the following month. Government is the opposite. I once waited six months for security clearance to look at an existing system.
Both have their upside. Private companies can change direction quickly. Government programmes, once moving, usually have actual budgets behind them. Nobody's asking you to deliver a transformation on petty cash.
The two failure modes are different too:
- Private sector failures are usually pace failures. Pushed too fast, skipped the close discovery, broke the cutover.
- Public sector failures are usually governance failures. Too many committees, too many sign-offs, scope frozen in concrete before anyone validated it against operations.
The fix is the same in both cases. Get the right senior person in the room early. Keep them there for the duration.
I take a small number of engagements at any one time. I'm direct about whether I'm the right fit. If a programme is in trouble, or you want a second opinion before signing with a vendor, get in touch. The fastest path is to book a 30-minute call on Calendly.
Three properties, one person: noeldcosta.com (this site, enterprise advisory), erpcv.com (consultant career products), commandcc.io (ERP programme tracking tool).
What size of programme do you typically work on?
Enterprise scale. Most of my clients are $100M to $5B in revenue, multi-entity, often multi-country. The work I do doesn't scale down well to $20M businesses, and the smallest engagement I'd take is typically a paid scoping of 1 to 2 weeks.
Are you available for full-time roles?
No. I run an advisory practice. I take a small number of engagements at any one time and stay personally involved for the duration. The named human stays in the room.
Do you resell SAP or Oracle licences?
No. I'm independent of vendors and system integrators. My fee structure doesn't depend on licence volume, Activate hours, or BTP subscriptions. That independence is the whole point of the engagement.
Can you write the business case if I haven't signed an SI yet?
Yes, and that's usually the right sequence. The business case should be written by someone who isn't selling you the implementation. Otherwise the incentives don't line up.
Do you take programme recovery work?
Yes. Roughly a third of my work is recovery. Late programmes, broken cutovers, SI relationships that have gone sideways. I diagnose what's real and what's political, then rebuild the plan with the client's team.
Where are you based, and where do you work?
UAE-based. I work across UAE, Saudi Arabia, the wider GCC, United Kingdom, Europe, Canada, and the United States. On-site presence for cutover and steering. Remote between.
What's the first step if I want to talk?
Book a 30-minute discovery call on Calendly. If we're a fit, that becomes a paid scoping engagement (1 to 2 weeks). If we're not, I'll tell you on the call and point you at someone who is.