Is Your Organization Actually Ready for ERP? 8 Questions to Ask Before You Go to Market
Is Your Organization Actually Ready for ERP? 8 Questions to Ask Before You Go to Market
Here’s a number that should concentrate the mind of anyone about to sign an ERP contract: depending on how failure is defined, industry research regularly suggests that a large proportion of ERP projects fall short of their original objectives.
That does not always mean the system collapses or the project is abandoned. More often, it means the implementation runs over budget, takes longer than expected, adoption is poor, or the business never sees the return it originally signed up for.
I’ve spent a large part of my career selling ERP systems and helping businesses move from legacy on-premise software to the cloud.
One thing I’ve noticed is that ERP buying is usually a top-down process. The board has approved a budget, management has agreed the old system needs to go, and procurement is preparing to approach the market.
That can create a false sense of readiness.
Having the budget and being ready are two very different things.
The uncomfortable truth is that ERP projects rarely struggle because the software simply does not work. More often, it comes down to weak ownership, poor planning, unclear processes, bad data and people who were never properly brought along for the journey.
So before you go anywhere near a vendor shortlist, here are eight questions worth asking internally.
1. Why are you changing ERP?
“Our current system is old” is not a business case.
Neither is “we want to move to the cloud”.
What is the actual problem you are trying to solve?
Perhaps month-end takes too long. Maybe stock visibility is poor, reporting relies on spreadsheets, approvals happen over email, or the business has simply outgrown the current platform.
Be clear on what needs to improve and why it matters now.
If you cannot explain the business problem in plain English, you are probably not ready to assess solutions.
2. What does success look like?
Decide this at the outset, not after go-live, and certainly not retrospectively to fit whatever actually happened.
Success should be measurable.
It might mean reducing month-end from ten days to five, improving stock accuracy, eliminating manual consolidation, speeding up invoice processing or supporting growth without adding more people to finance.
A successful go-live is not the same thing as a successful ERP project.
The real question is whether the business is operating better six months later.
3. Who owns the programme?
Every ERP project needs someone who owns the decision and carries it through implementation.
Not a committee. Not “finance will sort it”. Not whoever happened to be free for the kick-off call.
One person needs the authority to make calls when priorities conflict, because they will conflict, usually around week six, usually on a Friday.
You may also need a senior executive sponsor to remove blockers and hold people accountable, but the day-to-day ownership still needs to be clear.
If every decision has to wait for the next steering committee meeting, you do not have governance. You have a monthly delay.
4. Who actually owns your business processes?
You will need subject-matter experts who understand how the business really works, not just how the process manual says it works.
But an SME and a process owner are not always the same person.
An SME can explain how supplier invoices are handled today. A process owner needs to decide how they should be handled tomorrow.
Finance should sit at the heart of an ERP programme, but it should not automatically dominate it. In a manufacturing or distribution business, much of the return may come from operations, planning, inventory or fulfilment.
That should shape how you assess systems, rather than defaulting to whichever department shouts loudest in the workshop.
5. Are you buying a new system, or rebuilding the old one in the cloud?
Most organiations say they want a standard ERP implementation.
What they sometimes mean is that they want a standard system that behaves exactly like their existing bespoke one.
“We want standard Business Central, with only 47 small customizations,” is not a standard implementation.
Some processes genuinely are unique. Others exist because of historical limitations, old habits or spreadsheets that became business-critical without anyone officially admitting it.
Before asking for customisation, ask whether the process genuinely gives the business an advantage, or whether people are simply comfortable with it.
A new ERP system should be an opportunity to improve how you work, not just relocate every old workaround.
6. Have you made enough time for the project?
Once you identify your SMEs, you need to free up their time.
ERP is not something people can deliver in the evenings after finishing their day job.
These people will be needed for workshops, data cleansing, testing, training and decisions. Expecting them to do all of that while continuing as normal is one of the quickest ways to create delays.
That may mean backfilling part of their role or redistributing responsibilities.
Depending on the size of the implementation, it may also be worth bringing in a project manager. For many Business Central projects, that could be a part-time role. Someone still needs to chase decisions and hold people to deadlines who is not also trying to close month-end.
7. What state is your data in?
Bad data plus a new system equals bad results, just faster and with better reporting on how bad it is.
You will spend real time cleansing data and deciding what is actually worth carrying over.
Your implementation partner can help with tools, structure and migration, but your own people need to own the decisions. They know the difference between a genuine customer record and a duplicate from 2019 that nobody has had the nerve to delete.
You should also understand what the ERP needs to connect to.
Banking, CRM, payroll, expenses, warehousing, e-commerce, reporting and industry-specific systems can all add cost and complexity. You do not need every integration fully designed before going to market, but you do need to know they exist.
8. Have you underestimated change management?
Given how often poor adoption damages ERP projects, change management deserves more than a line on the project plan.
New software worries people, understandably. You are asking someone to abandon a way of working they may have followed for years, sometimes decades.
Training is part of the answer, but training is not the whole answer.
Start involving people early. Identify the individuals who can lead the change within each team. Give them time to test the system, challenge the design and support their colleagues.
It is also worth tracking readiness properly.
A simple matrix covering training, UAT sign-off, outstanding issues and confidence with day-one processes will tell you far more than asking whether everyone feels “fairly comfortable” in a status meeting.
Why this matters more than which system you pick
None of this is particularly complicated, and none of it requires a vendor in the room.
Most of it comes down to discipline before you even pick up the phone to procurement.
Get these eight things right and the rest of the process—vendor selection, implementation and go-live gets considerably easier, whichever platform you choose.
That said, the platform and the implementation partner still matter.
At TEKenable, we specialise in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and have delivered ERP projects across a wide range of industries. We were recognised by Microsoft as Partner of the year Business Central.
But experience has taught us that the healthiest ERP projects are not always the ones with the biggest budgets or the longest RFPs.
They are the ones where the organisation is honest about why it is changing, who owns the decisions, how much work will be required internally and whether people are genuinely ready to change.
If you are weighing up whether your organisation is ready to go to market, that conversation is worth having before the RFP goes out, not after the project has started.