Buying an ERP system

A lot of ERP projects fail. Customers are disatisfied. The ERP providers are defending their delivery. The customer's CFO complains about the expensive project. The ERP consultant manager feels they charged to few hours. Why does this happen over and over again? Because of incompetent customers? Because of mean and greedy ERP providers? No, not at all. The customers are great and competent on what they do, but perhaps lack the experience of running an ERP system. And the ERP providers are so confident in their own solution that they perhaps forget that the customer doesn't share their knowledge. One of the biggest challenges are the differences in expectations. The customer often has a different vision of the ERP solution than the ERP provider. And quite often, the customers does'nt know how to make clear and measureable requirements. Whenever the customer requires functionality with an adjective, there is a potential risk. "Fast", "swift", "user friendly", "agile", "simple". These are all examples of requirements that are very difficult to measure. Who decides what is a "fast" system? If possible, make the requirements in a measureable way. "Printing an invoice can take max 5 seconds" rather than "The invoice process must be fast". Or "There should be max three steps to create a purchase order" rather than "It must be intuitive".