Architecture and Applications · Focus topic
ERP strategy and system change
By Redaktion techport.ai, IT-Beratung · Last updated on
In most mid-sized companies the ERP is the system everything hangs on: orders, stock, production, invoices, the figures for the bank. Precisely for that reason the decision about its future gets postponed until it is forced from outside, by the end of vendor support, by a requirement the system cannot meet, or by the departure of the only person who can still adapt it.
An ERP decision is not a technology decision. It is a statement about how the company intends to work in five to ten years. It can be prepared, and it can be put on numbers instead of being settled between instinct and a vendor presentation.
How you notice it
- The system is so heavily customised that a version change is considered impossible in house.
- Processes continue outside the ERP, in spreadsheets and side systems.
- The vendor has announced an end of maintenance and the date is approaching.
- There is exactly one person or exactly one provider who can make changes.
Why this happens
ERP systems run for ten to twenty years and are adapted during that time to the particularities of the company. Every single adaptation made sense, and the sum is a system that fits the company exactly and can therefore no longer be updated. At the same time the practice is missing: nobody in house has ever done an ERP change, the accounts from peers are discouraging, and the cost of a change is visible while the cost of doing nothing is not.
How we go about it
- Clarify state and deadlines. We record version, maintenance status, announced end dates, scope and nature of customisations, interfaces and the share of processes that actually run in the system. Added to that is an assessment of how much knowledge sits in house and how much with the provider.
- Assess the options. We set three paths against each other: stay and modernise, move to the vendor's current generation, or replace the system. Each is assessed with effort, duration, risk, impact on operations and follow-on cost across five to seven years.
- Question the customisations. We go through the customisations one by one and classify them: genuinely company specific, covered by the standard of the new generation, or the result of a process that can be changed. This review drives cost and duration of a change more than any other factor.
- Decide and plan the rollout. We prepare the decision paper for management and then plan the introduction with data analysis, migration plan, test concept, training and a fallback. The decision rests on the numbers, not on the best presentation.
What you gain
- A decision that is justified and still traceable in two years.
- A realistic estimate of effort and duration before you commit.
- A plan that respects the vendor's deadlines instead of ignoring them.
From our projects
Reviewing customisations regularly reveals that a substantial share of them reproduces processes that no longer exist, or rebuilds functions the current standard provides. Doing that review before vendor selection changes how you negotiate and how you budget. The second most common finding concerns the data: the number of active master records is almost always well below the number present, and that difference decides weeks in the migration plan. Both are analyses that take a few weeks and change the order of magnitude of the whole initiative.
Good to know
When your vendor announces an end of maintenance, the date given is not the date on which the system stops working but the date from which you receive no further security updates and no further legal adjustments. For SAP ECC 6.0, mainstream maintenance for enhancement packages 6 to 8 ends on 31 December 2027, with a chargeable extension available until the end of 2030. Since an ERP change in the mid-market typically takes twelve to twenty-four months, the timing of the decision matters more than the timing of the switch. Factor in as well that legal requirements such as electronic invoicing have to be implemented in the running system regardless of whether a change is planned.
Häufige Fragen
Should we adapt processes or the system?
As a rule: adapt the processes, except where they genuinely differentiate your business. Experience shows that applies to a small share of the workflow, usually in production, in costing or in an industry specific detail. Keeping everything else in the standard lowers implementation cost and is what makes future updates possible at all.
What does an ERP change cost in the mid-market?
That can only be answered seriously after the analysis, because data quality, the number of interfaces and the scope of customisations set the range. As orientation: licence or subscription cost is rarely the largest block. Internal effort, migration, testing and training frequently make up the larger share and are regularly understated in offers.
Let us talk about ERP strategy and system change
In a thirty minute first call we work out where your biggest lever sits and whether we are the right people for it.
Further reading
Back to the field Architecture and Applications