In most troubled ERP projects, the post-go-live conversation starts with one sentence: “the system doesn’t fit us.” Look closer and the system is working exactly as configured. The problem is that it was configured on processes nobody had agreed.
Point one: process
Before any document cycle is set up, there should be a written answer to simple questions. Who raises the purchase request? Who approves it, and up to what limit? When does it become a purchase order, and who receives the goods? When these questions stay open, the system is configured on the implementation team’s assumptions, and the internal team discovers after go-live that those assumptions don’t match reality.
Point two: authority
If every approval went through the owner before the ERP, it will go through the owner after it too, just with more clicks. An ERP doesn’t solve decision rights; it exposes them. That’s why we build a clear delegation-of-authority matrix before configuration, not after.
Point three: data
Opening balances that don’t reconcile, duplicate items under different names, customers without VAT numbers. Every data error that enters the system becomes a manual adjustment every month. Data migration isn’t a technical task at the end of the project; it’s a workstream that starts on day one.
What we do differently
We treat the weeks before configuration as the most important stage of the project: documenting and signing off document cycles with their owners, building the authority matrix, and cleaning and reconciling data before migration. After that, configuring the system itself, whether Odoo, Zoho or ERPNext, is the easy part.