The ERP decision is cheap to get right and expensive to get wrong
Selection, implementation and the oversight that keeps the build tied to the business case. We run the evaluation, you make the decision, and the same people are still there at cutover.
Most selections are decided before the evaluation starts
A shortlist arrives from somewhere. Three vendors demo for two hours each, all impressive, all showing the parts of the product they are strongest at. A scoring sheet gets completed afterwards to justify a decision that was already leaning one way.
The cost surfaces eighteen months later, in the workarounds nobody planned and the module that turned out to need a third party to make it usable. By then the switching cost is high enough that you live with it.
Then there is the migration itself, which is where most of the delay actually happens. Cutover gets treated as an event rather than a discipline. There is no rollback position anyone has tested, reconciliation is assumed rather than designed, and the decision about how much history to bring gets made by default inside a mapping spreadsheet.
We slow down the part that is cheap to slow down and add rigour to the part that usually gets compressed.
What the work covers
Requirements definition
Built by sitting with the people who will use the system. Each requirement marked load bearing or preference, because the two get weighted very differently and conflating them is how a shortlist ends up wrong.
Scored vendor comparison
Weighted scoring against your requirements, with weightings agreed by you before anyone demos. Demo scripts written around your processes, the same script for every vendor, so you compare products rather than sales teams.
Commercial and contract review
Licence structure, implementation estimate, what is excluded, and what the price does at renewal. This is where a good decision is most often undone.
Implementation delivery or oversight
We either run the build or hold the implementation partner to the business case the board approved. Scope movement logged cumulatively, acceptance criteria written from requirements rather than from the design.
Data migration and cutover
Extract, cleanse, map, load, reconcile. A tested rollback position, a defined cutover sequence, and parallel running across at least one full close before anyone declares it done.
Multi-entity and sector complexity
Consolidation across entities, inter-warehouse stock movement, credit control and scheme management. The parts that break a value-tier tool and get underestimated in every implementation estimate.
What you end up holding
Named artefacts, handed over. Not a slide deck summarising them.
- Requirements register marked load bearing or preference, signed off by the business
- Weighted scoring matrix with every vendor scored against every requirement
- Commercial comparison covering licence, implementation and five year cost
- Acceptance criteria mapped back to the original requirements
- Migration plan with cutover sequence, rollback position and reconciliation design
- Go-live readiness assessment with a go or no go recommendation
When to call us
Any one of these is enough. You do not need a defined project first.
- Multiple entities are consolidated by hand in Excel every month.
- A vendor has been recommended to you and you cannot tell whether it is the right one or the one somebody earns from.
- The implementation is reported as on track but the go-live date has moved twice.
- Change requests keep arriving and nobody can tell you what they add up to against the original business case.
- Month end close takes longer than it did two years ago.
How we engage
These apply across every system we work on, not just this one.
Systems selection
The full selection process in detail. Requirements, scored comparison, structured demos, reference checks and contract review.
Implementation and delivery oversight
Client-side oversight when somebody else is building. Scope control against the business case, independent acceptance testing and go-live readiness.
An assessment, not a proposal
Two to four weeks at a fixed price, delivered as a decision document. You own the output whether or not you carry on with us.
Start with an assessmentWe are an independent consulting firm. Software vendors do not pay us, so our recommendations come with the scoring behind them.