Get your ERP project out of the mud

Without active leadership, the design mirrors the legacy system. Business outcomes take a back seat—and you spend millions on “new” ERP that delivers yesterday’s performance at today’s price.

When the executive “why” goes quiet, frontline preferences fill the gap and the build drifts toward replicating legacy habits. Meetings track dates instead of outcomes, decisions get deferred, and scope morphs to “make the go-live,” not “move the numbers.”

Where we come in: We re-anchor the program to 3–5 fixed business outcomes, deliver quick hits that unblock cash flow and month-end, and run a 60–90 day recovery plan governed by a tight steerco. A one-page leadership narrative keeps decisions and messaging tied to those outcomes.

It starts as an “upgrade,” morphs into “transformation,” and there’s no clear definition of done. Every demo adds scope, dates slip, costs climb, and confidence erodes.

Without a crisp definition of done, every demo spawns new “must-haves” and no one knows what will actually ship. Teams chase moving targets, burn budget on rework, and still can’t point to working value in production.

Where we come in: We define success up front and put a roadmap in place that holds the line—stabilize in weeks, recover in two-week sprints with outcome-based demos, and strengthen with admin handoff and a quarterly optimization plan. Change control and a ranked backlog keep scope serving value, not the calendar.

Training teaches how to use the system according to best practices. Change management explains why we’re changing, what’s different tomorrow, and what success looks like—creating buy-in so people actually use the system to deliver results. When the “why” is missing, teams cling to spreadsheets like life rafts and blame the software.

Users can learn the clicks and still reject the change. If people don’t understand what’s different tomorrow and how success will be measured, spreadsheets reappear, shadow processes grow, and the system takes the blame.

Where we come in: We lead with the story—why now, what good looks like—and back it up with role-based enablement: champions, scenario walkthroughs using your data, and concise playbooks. Office hours and a visible feedback loop convert resistance into adoption.

Every exception becomes a “must-have,” and you rebuild yesterday’s Franken-system inside today’s ERP. Cost climbs, performance drags, upgrades stall, and integrations get brittle. In the end, you’ve paid enterprise money for a look-alike of your legacy system—slower to change, harder to support, and no closer to the value you were promised.

Customs feel helpful in isolation but compound into fragility: higher support costs, slower releases, and painful upgrades. The more you tailor for edge cases, the farther you drift from best practice and the harder it gets to realize benefits at scale.

Where we come in: We flip to configuration-first, replace invasive mods with out-of-the-box features or proven ISVs, and set upgrade-safe guardrails. We kill-list costly customizations, rationalize integrations with monitoring and reconciliation, and add regression tests so changes don’t break what works.

The project team celebrates, disbands, and users are left to “figure it out.” Tickets pile up, workarounds return, spreadsheets creep back in, and the value case quietly dies. Post–go-live needs—bug fixes, hotfixes/updates, integration monitoring, security tweaks, ISV/version changes—don’t vanish; they require a responsive partner to keep the system healthy.

Post–go-live is when reality hits—bugs surface, integrations wobble, and small posting errors snowball into missed closes. Without fast fixes and clear ownership, teams revert to workarounds, trust erodes, and adoption stalls just when momentum should build.

Where we come in: We treat go-live as the start of operations: structured hypercare with clear SLAs, named ownership, and a public issue queue, plus a simple runbook for finance and ops. A quarterly optimization plan tied to KPIs ensures momentum and value compound.