Why you should not
buy Licenses and Services But Project Success!

The Recipe for your Project Success consists of many Ingredients

Of course you only want to invest in successful projects. But that’s not that easy. After all, many conditions must be met for your project to succeed. If one or two of these conditions are not met, the whole thing can quickly end in partial or complete failure.

Compare your project to a cake. You usually have a recipe with exact measurements for all the ingredients. However, if you leave out the flour, for example, your cake simply won’t be a masterpiece. The recipe for success for your ERP project also consists of special ingredients:

• Clear business objectives that underpin your strategy as well as prioritized requirements
• Effective communication that makes the “why” a topic, e.g. as part of a kick-off meeting
• Active participation of management, so that processes and mindsets change sustainably
• Modernized business processes, that focus on your customers
• Well-trained users who understand your entire IT platform
• An organizational change management that involves your employees right from the start

Failed Projects are expensive

Do you have any idea what a failed project costs your company? Make sure you consider this before you start the next project or migration to the cloud. It’s (a lot of!) money, energy, opportunity costs and loss of reputation! So why would you accept an offer that consists of a few cheap software modules and services instead of spending a little more on quality, completeness and coherence?

Failed ERP Projects: Icebergs with
inverted Learning Curves

A Lack of Willingness to Change stands in the Way of Success

An equally important question: why do so many implementation partners let their projects fail due to their customers’ lack of willingness to change - instead of thoroughly preparing them for this change process? Are they not aware of the success formula? Do they not have the courage to confront their customers with these demands? Or are they afraid of disappearing from the shortlist?

Forward-thinking companies don’t buy software licenses - they buy project success!

If you want to act with foresight, you can no longer just buy ERP software licenses. You need to buy project success.

The most important steps in selecting your software vendor:

1. Ask your potential implementation partners about their approach - also with regard to change management - and assess their chances of success.

2. Find out which of the partners can explain to you in detail which tasks and responsibilities you will have to take on yourselves within your project.

3. Ask them for a list of companies where the partners have already used this approach successfully.

4. Also pay attention to the industry affiliation of the reference companies in order to assess whether the potential vendors are familiar with possible special features of your industry.

If you receive predominantly convincing answers here, this is an indication that the approach does indeed seem promising.

Investing in a successful project can be a little more expensive. But always remember that the additional cost of quality will never be as high as the cost of a partially or completely failed project!