NASA’s return to the Moon with the Artemis program seems light-years away from the day-to-day of an SME, but it holds surprisingly practical lessons about transformation with Business Central and the modernization of management. At a recent event, Dr. Lori Glaze, the agency’s head of crewed flight, explained how such an ambitious goal becomes achievable "one proven capability, one informed decision, and one coordinated team at a time." That approach —captured in an article from the SAP News Center— sums up well what we see in any serious digitalization project: big leaps aren’t taken all at once, they’re built in stages.
At Tisa, we have been supporting private companies on that kind of journey since 1987. And although our field is ERP and not space, the principles that make a lunar mission viable are the same ones that make it viable to renew a company’s management system without slowing down the business.
Advancing by milestones: test before scaling
Artemis is designed as a sequence in which each mission validates capabilities for the next: an uncrewed test, then a crewed flight, then docking, and finally the lunar landing. No one tries to solve the entire future all at once. Each milestone reduces the risk of the next.
That is the most common mistake we find when a company decides to change its ERP: wanting to implement everything, in every area, on the same day. Business Central covers eight functional areas —finance and accounting, manufacturing, supply chain, sales, human resources, projects, services, and Business Intelligence—, but that doesn’t mean they all have to be activated at the same time.
A phased rollout lets you start with the core (for example, finance and inventory), learn from real usage, adjust, and then expand. Each stage confirms assumptions and leaves a more solid foundation for the next decision. The result: fewer surprises, more natural adoption by teams, and a visible return from the very first months.
Standardize in order to accelerate
Glaze pointed to a priority that sounds not very epic but is decisive: standardizing the architecture in order to repeat missions at a regular cadence. Innovating is not at odds with standardizing; on the contrary, standardization is the firm ground on which innovation advances faster.
In an SME, the lack of standards translates into fragmented information: one piece of data in a department’s spreadsheet, another in an old program, another in someone’s email. Teams lose hours reconciling figures and redoing decisions that had already been made.
An ERP like Business Central acts as that shared digital backbone. When purchasing, sales, warehouse, and accounting speak the same language and work on the same data, the company can scale processes that work and incorporate new developments without rebuilding everything each time. That is one of the reasons why many migrations from Navision (Dynamics NAV) make sense: it’s not change for the sake of change, it’s gaining a standardized, cloud-based foundation to grow on.
Faster and better-informed decisions
The scale of Artemis requires coordinating vehicles, spacecraft, suppliers, budgets, and international partners, each with its own timelines and risks. To avoid drowning in information, NASA brings the experience to the place where the work happens and explores artificial intelligence to help teams understand the status of complex programs and detect what requires attention.
The parallel with business is direct. Many managers have a huge amount of data, but not a unified view of what is changing, where pressure is building up, and which decision will have the most impact. The opportunity, both on the Moon and in an SME, is to move from systems that only document what already happened to systems that help interpret the situation and anticipate the next step.
On top of Business Central, this comes to earth with Power BI for dashboards that can be read at a glance, and with integrated Copilot
Autonomy that augments people, not replaces them
At NASA, robotic vehicles assess terrain, choose routes, and avoid obstacles with little intervention from Earth, and AI helps analyze enormous volumes of scientific data. The lesson is clear: autonomy is not about pushing people aside, but about letting technology manage complexity so that people decide better.
In a company, this translates into intelligent automation: with Power Automate you can chain together repetitive administrative tasks —reconciliations, notifications, approvals, sending documents— and reserve human judgment for what truly needs it. Responsibility and the final decision remain with people; technology handles the heavy lifting.
Alliances turn ambition into capability
No organization reaches the Moon alone: NASA coordinates agencies, commercial companies, aerospace manufacturers, and international partners, and each contributes a specific capability. That ecosystem is not an add-on to the mission: it is the way the mission becomes reality.
The same happens in digitalization. An SME doesn’t have to develop all the knowledge of an ERP, of data, or of AI internally. Having a specialized partner brings experience that is difficult to build in-house. As a Microsoft Partner and ISV, at Tisa we develop our own verticals on Business Central for sectors such as hospitality, distribution, sports centers, or fleets, and we have worked with retail, construction, and the food industry. But a good ecosystem requires more than signing a contract: it requires shared goals, clear responsibilities, and reliable information.
Trust is the ultimate operating system
When asked for her best leadership advice, Glaze was direct: surround yourself with capable people and trust them, because "no single person can do this alone." Technology, architecture, and processes matter, but they don’t replace teams that understand the mission and are empowered to act.
It applies to returning to the Moon and it applies to modernizing a company: test before scaling, standardize where you can, bring information closer to decisions, use technology to augment people, and rely on good alliances. The most ambitious results come when people, data, processes, and partners move forward together.
Launch your own transformation with Business Central
You don’t need a rocket to start: a well-chosen first milestone is enough. If you are evaluating renewing your ERP, migrating from Navision, or taking your first steps with data and AI applied to the business, at Tisa we help you design that phased journey, with judgment and no smoke and mirrors.
Let’s talk with no obligation: call us at (+34) 971 305 885, write to us at info@grupotisa.com, or visit grupotisa.com. We’ll help you define the next realistic step for your company.
Reference source: article by Jamison Braun in the SAP News Center about NASA’s Artemis program and transformation at scale.