Previously on ERP Survivor
Theme music. Clips of meeting rooms, whiteboards buried in process charts, and people squinting at screens at 7 p.m.
Narrator: “Twelve teams. One Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. A six-month plan that nobody believes. Only the strongest ways of work will last.”
«««< Updated upstream The pain is real. If you are the controller, the operations manager, or the information technology (IT) lead about to retire a wall of spreadsheets for a single system, you are the contestant. Here is the survival guide, with the lessons in plain English at each commercial break. ||||||| Stash base The pain is real. If you are a controller or operations manager about to retire a wall of spreadsheets for a single system, you are the contestant. Here is the survival guide, with the actual lessons in plain English at each commercial break. ======= The pain is real. If you are a controller or operations manager about to drop a wall of spreadsheets for one system, you are the player. Here is the guide, with the real lessons in plain English at each commercial break.
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Why this season matters now
«««< Updated upstream Most ERP projects run over on time or budget. Independent surveys such as the Panorama Consulting ERP report have found cost or schedule overruns on a large share of implementations year after year, and the usual culprit is not the software. It is change management: people quietly keeping their old spreadsheets running in parallel until the new system starves. ||||||| Stash base ERP projects fail at a rate that should scare any owner signing the check. Independent surveys such as the Panorama Consulting ERP report put cost or schedule overruns on a large share of implementations, and the usual culprit is not the software. It is change management: people quietly keeping their old spreadsheets running in parallel until the new system starves. ======= ERP projects fail at a rate that should scare any owner signing the check. Outside surveys such as the Panorama Consulting ERP report put cost or schedule overruns on a large share of rollouts, and the usual cause is not the software. It is change management: people still keeping their old spreadsheets running side by side until the new system starves.
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For a Denver SMB (5-200 staff), that flop has a price you can feel. A stalled rollout means paying for software you do not use, a finance team doing the work twice, and a month-end close that gets slower instead of faster. The win is the flip: one source of truth, a close that drops from two weeks to a few days, and audit-ready numbers without a fire drill.
Meet your players
The Spreadsheet People (Finance tribe)
- Linda, the Excel Empress — has a close bond with every VLOOKUP ever written
- Dave, Macro Man — thinks any problem yields to a 47-tab workbook
- Sarah, the Sum-If Savant — speaks in formulas, dreams in pivot tables
The Legacy Holdouts (Operations tribe)
- Bob, the Database Whisperer — has run the same inventory system since 1987 and sees no reason to stop
- Carol, the Custom Code Queen — has written 47 workarounds for the old system
- Mike, Migration Mike — certain the data move will work on the first try
The ERP Evangelists (IT tribe)
«««< Updated upstream
- Jennifer, Integration Jenny — believes ERP will solve world hunger
- Tom, Best Practices Tom — has memorized the vendor methodology and quotes it at parties
- Alex, API Alex — thinks every gap closes with the right application programming interface (API) connector ||||||| Stash base
- Jennifer, Integration Jenny — believes ERP will solve world hunger
- Tom, Best Practices Tom — has memorized the vendor methodology and quotes it at parties
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Alex, API (Application Programming Interface) Alex — thinks every gap closes with the right connector
- Jennifer, Integration Jenny — thinks ERP will solve world hunger
- Tom, Best Practices Tom — has learned the vendor playbook and quotes it at parties
- Alex, API (Application Programming Interface) Alex — thinks every gap closes with the right connector
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Episode 1: the alliance of the spreadsheet people
The safety challenge: gathering needs
Host: “Today’s challenge is gathering needs. Each tribe writes down how it works now and what it needs from the new ERP. The tribe with the most honest needs wins safety from the first round of scope creep.”
Finance tribe game plan
Linda: “The new system needs to do everything our spreadsheets do, but faster.”
«««< Updated upstream Dave: “And auto-generate month-end reports, quarterly forecasts, budget variance, and that special report Linda built for the chief executive that shows profit by phase of the moon.” ||||||| Stash base Dave: “And auto-generate month-end reports, quarterly forecasts, budget variance, and that special report Linda built for the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) that shows profit by phase of the moon.” ======= Dave: “And auto-create month-end reports, quarter forecasts, budget variance, and that special report Linda built for the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) that shows profit by phase of the moon.”
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Sarah (typing fast): “I’m listing all 247 of our templates. Should I add the backup copies of the backup copies?”
Linda: “Of course. And it must keep our color-coding. Red is rush, yellow means I need to review it, and green means… we are not sure, but we have used it for twelve years.”
Commercial break — the lesson: Spreadsheet sprawl is not a quirk. It is a broken control. Two-hundred-plus templates with no version control means nobody can prove which number is right at close. The goal of ERP is not to rebuild every spreadsheet inside the software. It is to decide which numbers are the real ones, who owns them, and where they live. “Make it work like Excel” is the ask that sinks the project.
Operations tribe panic mode
Bob: “The ERP people say we cannot change the inventory module to match our system just as it is.”
Carol: “But what about our process for back-ordered items that were pre-ordered, then re-ordered during the busy-season tweak?”
Mike: “The data move will handle it. How hard can moving 30 years of data be, from a system changed by seventeen coders who all left without notes?”
Bob (staring into the distance): “We had a good system. A simple system. You could fix it with a screwdriver and a can of compressed air.”
Commercial break — the lesson: Every unwritten workaround is a trap for data moves. Before you move a single record, list the custom changes and ask which ones match a real business rule versus a habit that grew around a system limit. Most of Carol’s 47 workarounds go away when the old limit does. The ones that last become setup, not custom code.
IT tribe’s too-sure hour
Jennifer: “Once we go live, all our data will flow between teams and create one source of truth.”
Tom (consulting his binder): “Per the playbook, Phase 1.3.2.B states 47% speed gains in the first quarter.”
Alex: “If anything breaks, I’ll write a custom connector. A weekend, two tops.”
Commercial break — the lesson: Vendor playbooks are useful, but the published numbers are sales talk, not a forecast for your shop. Treat every “tops, two weekends” connector estimate as the best-case end of a range and double it. The teams that win plan for the connectors that will not work on the first try.
The plot twist: reality strikes
Host: “Today’s guest judge is a real ERP consultant who has seen this before.”
Guest Judge (chuckling): “Let me guess. Finance wants the system to be Excel. Operations wants nothing to change. IT thinks this wraps in six months with no issues.”
Awkward silence.
Guest Judge: “First reality check. Every one of you will change how you work. Your templates will go stale. Your workarounds will become standard features. And it will take longer and cost more than you planned.”
Linda (gasping): “But… my macros!”
Bob (muttering): “I knew this was a bad idea.”
Jennifer: “But the speed gains!”
The alliance forms
Narrator: “Faced with the facts, odd teams form…”
Linda and Bob, huddled in the break room.
Linda: “Bob, I know we have fought about month-end matching, but we need to stick together.”
Bob: “They want to wipe out everything we built. My inventory system is old, but it works.”
Linda: “And my reports are dense, but bosses see just what they need.”
Bob: “So we push for few changes?”
Linda: “Deal. The Alliance of the Spreadsheet People is born.”
Commercial break — the lesson: This pact is the moment most rollouts die. When your most skilled people quietly agree to push back, they keep the old systems alive in the shadows, and the new ERP never becomes the system of record. The fix is not to overrule Linda and Bob. It is to bring them in. Make them the ones who design the new process, and the pact flips from blocker to backbone.
How a real rollout plays out
You do not win this game with software. You win it with a phased plan that gives doubters a job.
- Look and map the work (2-4 weeks). Write down how work really happens, not how the org chart says it should. This is where Linda’s 247 templates get sorted into “keep as a report,” “becomes a system function,” and “should never have existed.”
- Design and setup (4-8 weeks). Use the vendor’s standard chart of accounts and workflows where they fit; set up, do not rewrite, unless a real business rule needs it. Microsoft’s own Dynamics 365 implementation guidance is a solid primary source for what a tight method looks like.
- Data move and checks (3-6 weeks, at the same time). Move in waves, match each wave against the old system, and have Bob sign off on inventory counts. The data move is the step that always runs long.
- User tests and training (2-4 weeks). Real users run real entries before go-live. Make the spreadsheet holdouts your testers; if it gets past Linda, it will get past anyone.
- Go-live and settle-in (4-8 weeks). Plan for a slower close the first cycle, then faster every cycle after. Drop the old spreadsheets on a date, in writing, so nobody runs both side by side.
Watch-outs that take out players
- Side-by-side systems. If the old spreadsheets keep running “just in case,” the ERP becomes a second job, not the new home. Set a drop date and stick to it.
- Changing the system to keep old habits. Every custom change is a cost you pay again at the next upgrade. Default to standard setup.
- Skipping the people work. The software installs in weeks. Buy-in takes a quarter. Budget time for training, backing from an owner or controller, and a few in-house backers.
Next step
Facing your own rollout reality check? See our [[ERP consulting]], including the change-management work that keeps the Alliance of the Spreadsheet People on your side instead of against you.
Drawn from patterns seen across dozens of ERP rollouts. The people are made up. The struggles are not. No spreadsheets were harmed in the making of this episode — though several were, at last, dropped.
«««< Updated upstream Next episode: [[ERP Survivor, episode 2: the great chart of accounts debate]], where Linda discovers the new system does not support her 47 project codes, and Bob learns that best practices do not include his legendary emergency override procedure. ||||||| Stash base Next episode: “The great chart of accounts debate,” where Linda discovers the new system does not support her 47 project codes, and Bob learns that best practices do not include his legendary emergency override procedure. ======= Next episode: “The great chart of accounts debate,” where Linda finds the new system does not allow her 47 project codes, and Bob learns that best practices do not include his famed emergency override step.
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