Stalled ERP switch brought to go-live at an Ostend wholesaler

Situation

An owner-run wholesaler of hospitality supplies in Frankfurt-Ostend, 48 staff, about €11 million revenue per year, serving about 600 restaurants and hotels across Rhein-Main. The firm was switching from a 15-year-old inventory system to a new ERP. The project had a budget of about €220,000 and had slipped its go-live date twice. The software vendor blamed the firm’s data. The warehouse lead blamed the vendor. The owner ran sales, purchasing, and the project, and the project got what was left of his week.

He did not want a full-time project manager on the payroll for a project that would end. He wanted someone senior to own it for four months and then hand it back.

Approach

We ran the part-time tier of our interim and project leadership service: four to five days a month on one defined mandate, bring the ERP switchover to go-live, over four months.

Month one: we took the project apart. Two days with the vendor, two days with the warehouse and office teams. The real blocker was neither data nor software. The firm had never decided who owned the article master, so 4,200 articles had been cleaned three times by three people with three results. We set one owner, one cleaning rule, and one deadline. We rebuilt the plan into 14 weekly steps with a named person on each and gave the owner a one-page status note every Friday.

Month two: the article master was signed off. We ran the first full test migration with 30 real orders from a Thursday and had the warehouse team pick them from the new screens on the Friday. Nine defects came back. Seven were configuration, two were vendor fixes with dates.

Month three: we appointed the firm’s purchasing lead as the internal project lead and ran the meetings together. The second test migration returned two defects. We wrote the go-live weekend plan hour by hour, with the roll-back point at Sunday 14:00.

Month four: go-live over the first weekend, on the date set in month one. We stayed on site the Monday and Tuesday, then stepped back to two check-in calls a week and closed the mandate with a written handover.

Result

In this scenario the system went live on the planned date. Eleven issues were open on the Monday. All eleven were closed within 30 days by the internal lead with the vendor. The project closed within 5% of its €220,000 budget.

The owner got his week back in month two, when the Friday status note replaced his daily involvement. The purchasing lead who ran the project from month three now owns the ERP relationship.

What it cost

€6,500 per month for four months, €26,000 in total, agreed as a fixed monthly fee before the mandate started. It bought four to five days a month of senior project leadership, a rebuilt plan, two test migrations, the go-live weekend on site, weekly written status for the owner, and a trained internal successor. The work is covered by our 100% money-back guarantee: full refund on request within 14 days of delivery.

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