Flow audit, business interviews, risks and roadmap. Deliverables: diagnostic, tooling map, register of friction points and priorities.
Framing an ERP project in an industrial SME.
An industrial SME was running on spreadsheets, paper documents and disconnected software. The challenge wasn't picking a product — it was understanding how the company actually worked before committing to anything. Here's the engagement, anonymised.
Anonymised case. No names, no figures, no vendors cited.
The starting point
Tools that don't talk to each other, and routines nobody wrote down.
- Spreadsheets, paper documents and disconnected software coexisted.
- Practices varied between teams and rested on informal routines.
- Requirements were expressed without test criteria or priority levels.
- Planning relied on files and tacit knowledge.
- Items, customers and suppliers were coded inconsistently.
Our role
Framing — not selling software.
We worked upstream and alongside the client — not as an integrator, not as a vendor. The client decides; we produce what makes the decision possible.
The method
Seven steps, in this order.
Observation, interviews, SIPOC, roles, data and interfaces. Deliverables: as-is maps, process sheets, roles-data matrix.
Co-designing flows, arbitrating roles and business rules, so historical dysfunction isn't rebuilt into the new system. Deliverables: to-be maps, RACI, rules, backlog.
With criticality and demonstration scenarios. Deliverables: specification, requirements-process matrix, acceptance criteria.
Vendor demos don't always reveal the critical gaps. Multi-criteria grid, imposed scenarios, scoring. Deliverables: grid, demo scripts, scorecards, risk summary.
Management, business teams, integrator and users lacked shared rules. Deliverables: project charter, RACI, plan, risk register, dashboard.
Before final configuration, not after. Deliverables: impact matrix, change plan, ambassador kit.
Inventory, owners, quality rules, cleansing and migration. Deliverables: dictionary, coding rules, migration plan.
What it changed
A project built on facts, not impressions.
By the end of framing, the company had a shared read of its real processes, testable requirements it could hold vendors to, and the governance to arbitrate along the way. We publish no performance figure: ERP metrics depend on scope, duration and factors that aren't all ours to claim. What we document is the method and the deliverables.
Evidence
On request, in a meeting.
We can walk you through anonymised extracts of real deliverables — a process map, a requirements matrix, a selection grid — with their legend. These aren't published online: they're shown in conversation, respecting the client's confidentiality.
An ERP project to frame?
Framing is short — and it decides everything that follows.