Paul Barnhurst says 70% of ERP projects fail, but not because of the software. Implementers assume companies have already done the prep work: documented processes, cleaned data, written test scripts. He finds this foundational work is missing 90% of the time, leaving finance teams drowning in unmanaged tasks.
70%.
90%.
I view that 70% failure rate of ERP from a finance and operations lens. But you're in finance. You hire a great system implementer. They come out and say, okay, we're going to put in the system, and here's all the things you're going to have to participate in. You look at that as a finance person going, oh, my God, I got my day job. And then what happens is all of the things that nobody is managing because the internal client has said, okay, we've got this, which is like, oh, process documentation and management and decision making and cleaning up your data and creating test scripts and educating the rest of the company on the process changes and handling change management. There's all these intangible things that make it absolutely crazy. System implementers generally start assuming you have this whole phase zero work done, and 90% of the time it's not.
Trust and Leadership Lessons for FP&A From 100+ Top Leaders with CFO Jon Laudie
