Take your customer list as it stands today. How much of it would you be willing to load into a new system unchanged?

Nearly all of it. Keeping it clean is somebody's actual job.

Most of it, after a tidy-up we already know how to do.

It needs a real clean-up. Nobody has opened the older records in years.

We genuinely do not know what is in there.

Who is accountable for the customer master — the record set itself, not the department?

One named person for each set, and everyone knows the name.

A named person for most of them. One or two are unclear.

Anyone can create records. Nobody owns them.

How much of the executive sponsor's week is in the diary for this project, for the whole project?

A standing weekly slot they chair, already booked for the duration.

A monthly steering meeting, plus availability when something escalates.

They are supportive and will make time when it is needed.

No sponsor at executive level. Finance or IT is carrying it.

What does the approved budget actually cover?

Licence, implementation, migration, training, contingency, and a five-year view of licence and support.

Licence and implementation with a contingency. Year two onwards is not modelled.

Licence and implementation, no contingency.

Mainly the licence. We will find the rest as we go.

Where did your requirements come from?

From walking real transactions with the people who do them, with volumes and exception rates written down.

From workshops with department heads, described from memory.

From a vendor's feature list, or a template we found.

We do not have requirements written down yet.

Has this company tried this before?

Yes, and we wrote down why it stalled. Those causes have been dealt with.

Yes, and everyone has a theory about why it failed. Nothing was written down.

Yes, more than once. Nobody mentions it now.

When the software does something differently from the way you do it now, what happens?

We change the process, unless the difference is something we genuinely compete on.

It depends. We would argue it case by case.

We would expect the software to be changed to match how we work.

Our processes are not negotiable. That is how we work.

When two departments want the system to work in incompatible ways, who decides, and does the decision hold?

One named person decides, and the decision is not reopened.

A steering committee decides, and its decisions hold.

It escalates to the owner or the CEO, whenever they get to it.

It goes back and forth until someone gives up or the deadline forces it.

Six months after go-live, who owns the system?

Named, agreed, with time protected in their week.

We have a candidate in mind. It is not formalised.

The implementation partner, under a support contract.

We have not thought that far ahead.

Diagnostic · 10 questions · 4 min

ERP Readiness Score

Ten questions on whether your company is ready to start an ERP project, and a straight answer if it is not.

This does not tell you which system to buy. It tells you whether the company is in a state where buying one would help.

Most of what decides an ERP project is settled before a vendor is contacted: whether the process is one process, whether anyone owns the data, whether decisions can be made in a week. Answer as things actually are, not as they are meant to be. A flattering answer produces a flattering score and no information.

Question 1 of 10

About 4 minutes

If you asked four people in the same department how a purchase gets approved, how many different answers would you get?

The real route, including approvals given by phone, in a corridor or over WhatsApp.

ERP Readiness Score

A score is a starting point, not an answer

Tell us what came out and what surprised you. We will tell you what we would look at first.

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