What actually goes wrong in ERP projects?
The real problem is rarely the software choice; it is that scope and data responsibility are not written down. Projects without an out-of-scope list, without acceptance criteria and without a data quality measurement stall at go-live. We break the budget into seven lines in our [ERP cost guide](/en/blog/erp-consulting-guide).
What we do
- Current-state analysis and target process design, with scope and out-of-scope lists
- ERP selection assessment comparing package, configuration and custom development
- Data migration: accounts, stock items, bills of material, routings, open orders and balances
- Configuration development: screens, reports, business rules and approval flows
- Integrations and reconciliation design
- User training, parallel-run plan and a go-live checklist
We measure the migration first
Migration cost correlates with data quality, not record count. Before quoting we take three measurements: the share of duplicate accounts, the share of stock items with inconsistent unit of measure or product code, and the share of accounts whose open balance does not match its source document.
Integrations
Bank statements and collection matching (see the [bank integration guide](/en/blog/bank-integration-guide)), e-invoicing and e-archive, virtual POS, shipping and marketplaces, shop-floor data capture, time attendance and payroll. Each endpoint gets its own test scenario and reconciliation report.
Measurement plan
We repeat the same measurements before go-live and three months after: time to close reconciliations, stock count variance, invoicing delay and report preparation time. An "it improved" assessment without a baseline is not verifiable.
Frequently asked questions
Can we improve without replacing our current ERP?
In most cases yes. The problem usually sits in missing integrations, undefined business rules and the reporting layer rather than in the core product, and those three can often be fixed while keeping the existing system.
How is consolidation handled across group companies?
Chart-of-accounts mapping, intercompany elimination and currency conversion rules must be written first. If technical setup starts before those rules are settled, the consolidated report is corrected by hand every period.
Does the whole scope have to be finished before go-live?
No. The lower-risk approach is to start with one end-to-end flow and add the remaining modules in a controlled sequence. The parallel-run period and its duplicate data entry effort belong in the plan from the beginning.