Migration & Implementation
The switching decision and how to get it right. · 8 posts
When to Stay: The Honest Case for Optimizing Your Current ERP Before Migrating
Not every company that's frustrated with its ERP needs a new one. Sometimes the tool is fine and the process is broken. Sometimes the implementation is under-configured rather than the software under-capable. Selling a migration to a company that doesn't need one is the same conflict of interest as the implementation partner who over-scopes everything. Here's the decision framework.
Chart of Accounts Design Is Destiny: Getting It Right Before Go-Live
A bad chart of accounts is the original sin of ERP implementations. It makes every report slightly wrong, turns every segment analysis into a workaround, and makes the next migration more painful than it needed to be. Most companies design their COA during the busiest phase of implementation, under time pressure, without fully understanding the reporting requirements that will be placed on it for the next decade.
The Parallel Run: How Long You Actually Need to Run Two Systems
Finance teams want to run old and new systems in parallel until they're confident. Implementation partners want to cut over and close the engagement. The tension between those two interests is where parallel run decisions get made — and where the consequences of getting it wrong become most visible.
What to Actually Negotiate in Your ERP Contract
Procurement teams focus on per-seat pricing because it's the number on the pricing page. The real negotiating leverage is in data portability clauses, implementation SLA terms, upgrade path commitments, and what happens contractually when you decide to leave. Here's the clause-by-clause checklist that rarely gets discussed before the signature.
Data Migration Is Where ERP Projects Actually Die
The demo goes beautifully. The training sessions go well. Then someone tries to move eight years of transaction history out of four systems that never agreed on what a customer ID was. Data migration is consistently where ERP implementation plans make contact with organizational reality — and where the gap between what was promised and what's possible becomes impossible to ignore.
Big Bang vs Phased Rollout: The ERP Implementation Debate That Has a Right Answer
Most ERP consultants will tell you the choice between big bang and phased rollout 'depends on your situation.' That's technically correct and practically useless. We make the case that the conditions under which each approach works are knowable in advance — and that the recommendation you're most likely to hear protects the consulting firm more than it protects your project.
The ERP Migration Fear Is Real. Here's What Actually Goes Wrong.
ERP migrations fail more often than they succeed on time and on budget. The reasons aren't mysterious — they're the same three things in almost every case: scope creep, data quality, and change management. We break down each failure mode with the specificity that vague advice about 'executive sponsorship' never provides.
How to Know You've Outgrown Your ERP (Without Waiting for the Crisis)
The signs are subtle at first. A spreadsheet that gets emailed every Monday morning. A Slack channel that exists to coordinate between two systems. A close process that takes a little longer each quarter. None of these feel like system failures. They are. We describe the pattern — and the inflection point most companies recognize only in retrospect.