The ERP / Systems Lens
An ERP Program Is a Process Decision Wearing a Technology Budget
Enterprise systems fail loudly and predictably, and almost never for technical reasons. The failure is decided long before implementation, in the questions the organization declined to answer.
Written by Steve Kopecky · 6 minute read
Founder & Principal, Compass Performance, Inc.
01
Configuration is a series of business decisions
Every configuration choice — how an order is structured, when revenue is recognized, who may release a hold, what constitutes a completed job — is a management decision presented as a technical field. When the process has not been designed, those decisions are made by whoever is in the room during a configuration workshop, usually under schedule pressure.
This is how organizations end up with an operating model authored by a system integrator. Not through negligence, but because the decisions had to be made and the business had not made them.
The counter-move is unglamorous: design the process first, decide the governing rules, and then configure to a process the enterprise has already agreed is worth keeping.
If the business has not decided how it intends to operate, the configuration will decide for it.
02
Master data is the second decision nobody wants
Data governance sounds like an IT topic and behaves like an accountability topic. Who owns the customer record. Who may create a part number. What makes an item obsolete, and who says so. Where these are unowned, the system inherits every inconsistency the spreadsheets used to hide.
The post-go-live signature is unmistakable: shadow spreadsheets reappear within a month, because people trust their own file more than the shared record. At that point the enterprise is paying for a system and operating on the same informal architecture it had before.
03
Reinforcement is designed before launch or not at all
Adoption is not a training question. It is a question of whether the new way of working is what managers ask about, review and reinforce from the first week. Where reinforcement is planned as a post-launch activity, the organization reverts during the exact period when reversion is easiest.
The three gates on this lens — process, systems and reinforcement — are therefore not a sequence of workstreams. They are three conditions that have to be true simultaneously before configuration begins.
Exhibit
Exhibit — The pre-configuration decision register
Before the first configuration workshop, this register is completed and signed by the business, not by the program. Any unowned row is a decision the integrator will make instead.
| Decision | Business owner | Rule as decided | Data object affected | Decided on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Order acceptance criteria | Commercial | Written | Sales order | Dated |
| Credit hold and release authority | Finance | Written | Customer | Dated |
| Item creation and obsolescence | Operations | Written | Item master | Dated |
| Job completion definition | Operations | Written | Work order | Dated |
| Revenue recognition trigger | Finance | Written | Invoice | Dated |
| Exception approval path | Executive | Written | Workflow | Dated |
The register is a readiness instrument, not documentation. A program with unowned rows is not ready to configure, whatever the plan says.
Before configuration begins
- The current process has been described as performed, not as documented.
- Every master data object has a named owner with authority to refuse a record.
- Governing rules are written and dated by the business rather than the program.
- The measures the system is expected to improve are already being measured today.
- Reinforcement — what managers will ask about weekly — is designed for week one.
An enterprise system is an excellent way to run a process worth keeping and an efficient way to institutionalise one that is not. The decision between the two is made before any software is touched.
Interactive exercise
Before the configuration workshop
Click the sequence that produces a process worth keeping.
The ERP program has a budget, a date and a partner. Design workshops start Monday.
The other side of the argument
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