How Olivier Khatib Is Fixing the Broken ERP Market With AI and DATANEO

When Olivier Khatib began receiving requests from mid-sized enterprises for help to connect their data, automate their operations, and make their systems finally talk to each other, he saw a pattern the industry had ignored for years.

"Every company has data," he says. "But very few have intelligence. They're not running on alignment—they're running on workarounds."

The conclusion was obvious and radical: the ERP market, as it exists today, is broken. Its architecture belongs to another century, and its customers know it.

Khatib—now 32, a computer science graduate from Imperial College London—founded DATANEO to rebuild that architecture from the ground up. His company is creating an AI-native enterprise platform that doesn't just store information; it understands it.

A Decade Inside the Problem

Khatib isn't an outsider throwing rocks at legacy systems — he spent a decade inside them.

He began his career in machine learning at AXA, then founded London Data Consulting

(LDC), a data-engineering firm that delivered AI and automation projects for HSBC, Bank of America, and BNP Paribas.

Across hundreds of enterprise deployments, the pattern was impossible to ignore: siloed systems, conflicting KPIs, endless integration projects, and "digital transformations" that transformed nothing.

"ERP systems were supposed to unify companies," Khatib says. "Instead, they created digital walls. Finance can't talk to sales. HR runs on another cloud. You can't automate what doesn't align."

By 2022, LDC was fielding increased RFPs from mid-sized companies with strong yearly earnings

"When hundreds of companies tell you the same story," he says, "it's not feedback. It's a market collapse in slow motion."

So Khatib built DATANEO to deliver what those companies had been asking for all along: coherence.

Reimagining ERP for the AI Era

DATANEO isn't another ERP—it's the AI-native evolution of one. Khatib calls it an "intelligence layer" that unifies a company's data, applications, and processes into a single reasoning system.

Traditional ERPs were built for the 1990s: centralized, rigid, and slow. Modern enterprises are distributed, API-driven, and constantly changing.

"You can't run a decentralized world on a monolithic brain," Khatib explains. "Companies need intelligence that flows through everything—not another silo pretending to be the center."

At the core of DATANEO sits NeoMind™, an AI engine that translates and contextualizes live data from every system—finance, CRM, HR, logistics—into one shared understanding.

Executives can simply ask:

● "Which suppliers are impacting our margins this quarter?"

● "Where are we losing time in order processing?"

● "How will cash flow shift if we change our logistics partner?"

NeoMind is designed to pull together relevant data quickly, run predictive analysis, and return explainable answers—complete with reasoning and recommended actions.

Its modular suite—Finance+, CRM+, HR+, Stock+, Project+, Proposal+, and Support+— operates like a network of intelligent instruments: independent, yet synchronized.

"You don't have to rip out your ERP," says Khatib. "You can connect it—or let DATANEO replace it entirely. Either way, it becomes one intelligent system."

^{Olivier Khatib}

The Model Context Protocol (MCP): Seamless Connectivity

Behind NeoMind lies DATANEO's biggest unlock—the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Think of it as a universal translator between AI and business systems. MCP allows NeoMind to securely connect to databases, APIs, and SaaS tools instantly, without the lengthy or resource-heavy integrations that can accompany some enterprise systems.

"It's plug-and-play for enterprise AI," Khatib explains. "You can connect new tools in hours, not months—and the system is intended to interpret that information with minimal setup."

Once connected, executives and teams can simply ask questions in plain language — and NeoMind handles the rest:

● "Summarize last quarter's sales pipeline from HubSpot and forecast conversions for Q4."

● "Sync all overdue invoices from Workday with our Finance+ dashboard."

● "List our top 10 customers in Salesforce with open support tickets from Support+."

● "Create a weekly performance summary combining CRM+ and HR+ metrics."

In seconds, DATANEO's NeoMind retrieves and reconciles live data from those systems, interprets it in context, and produces structured, explainable insights.

Each MCP connection runs in a temporary, permissioned context, giving the model access only to what it needs—nothing more. That design makes the system flexible yet secure, enabling rapid expansion without compromising governance.

For engineers, MCP means no brittle middleware or manual schema mapping. For executives, it may offer more flexibility in how they manage information and workflows—the ability to evolve the tech stack without starting from zero.

"We built MCP to make AI work with your existing tools, not against them," says Khatib. "That's how you scale intelligence without breaking trust."

Precision Meets Trust

Power is useless without control, so DATANEO was built around a zero-trust framework, AES-256 encryption, and full SOC 2 and GDPR compliance.

"We process data like a surgeon, not a miner," Khatib says. "We see only what we need to act—and we leave everything else untouched."

That philosophy has earned the company early traction in banking, healthcare, and logistics, where security and compliance are non-negotiable.

A Market Ready for Reinvention

The ERP market serves giants at the top and startups at the bottom—industry estimates suggest there may be a substantial gap between what companies spend on digital tools and the value they're able to capture: mid-sized enterprises are too complex for lightweight tools and too dynamic for multi-year SAP rollouts.

That's DATANEO's sweet spot.

"They don't want another implementation," Khatib says. "They want something that works next week."

SaaS-based technology often allows companies to start with minimal configuration and begin optimizing operations immediately. The system is built to adjust its outputs based on how it's used, continuously surfacing inefficiencies, forecasting risks, and suggesting opportunities before humans notice them.

"Every RFP we receive is another data point," Khatib says. "And the message is clear: the incumbents stopped listening."

Expansion to New York

After rapid adoption in Europe, DATANEO is expanding to the United States—starting with New York City.

"New York runs on deadlines," Khatib says. "Finance, retail, logistics—it's the perfect environment for what we do: fast, accountable, measurable."

The company expects to double its headcount within a year.

Building for Alignment

Inside DATANEO, Khatib runs the company the way he designs software: clean interfaces, clear ownership, and minimal friction.

Meetings start on time. Projects have single owners. Metrics decide debates. He's known for drawing system maps by hand and asking a question that cuts through noise:

"What changes when this works?"

"Speed without alignment just multiplies confusion," he says. "My job is to make sure the fast thing is also the right thing."

The Vision: Clarity That Compounds

Khatib believes the next leap in enterprise AI won't come from bigger models—but from smarter orchestration.

"The last generation made enterprises more digital," he says. "We're making them more intelligent."

In his view, AI isn't here to replace systems; it's here to make them finally make sense.

"We've spent 30 years digitizing business," Khatib says. "Now it's time to synchronize it."

He says:

"In the end, clarity is the product. Everything else is noise."