Key Reasons behind Budget and Timeline Overages

Many ERP projects exceed budget and timeline expectations. Overages are due to a number of factors, including:

1.        Budgets and timeframes that do not take into account business process improvement, organizational change management, backfilling and resource allocation, and / or software customization.

Mitigation Step: Create a business case and devote adequate resources to ensure accurate project planning.

2.       Leadership teams that choose systems based on reputation or vendor sales pitches rather than systems that truly fit their “future state” requirements.

Mitigation Step: Leverage independent resources to conduct full requirements gathering, business process improvements and software evaluations and negotiations.

3.       Leadership teams that fail to anticipate the magnitude of the project and the impact it has on end-user productivity and / or morale both prior to and following software implementation.

Mitigation Step: Conduct executive alignment and education exercises; create a business case determining goals and measurement tools, and ensure strong organizational change management planning and execution.

4.       Non-customized training that is based solely on the technical aspects of the system and fails to train users on new processes.

Mitigation Step: Leverage third-party resources to customize training to each practice area and its processes.

5.       Lack of concerted communication to end-users about the reasons behind the implementation, the anticipated benefits stemming from successful adoption and the ways in which each individual end-user and executive will affect project success or failure.

Mitigation Step: Create and follow a comprehensive organizational change management plan.