The ERP is live. So why is everything still agreed over the phone?

Rolling out the ERP was a serious undertaking. Data migration, training, months of adjustment until everything settled. Now the accounts run, the warehouse has a stock figure, invoices come out of the system. Yet when a non-standard discount needs approving, an urgent delivery needs arranging, or someone has to decide what to do with goods that arrived damaged, it all goes back to the phone.

That does not mean the ERP is bad, or badly implemented. Usually it means the ERP is doing exactly what it was built for, and nothing beyond.

What an ERP is built for

An ERP is a record. What was bought, what was sold, what is in stock, who owes whom and how much. The rules for that are much the same in every business: bookkeeping, tax, documents the law requires. That is why it usually makes sense to buy an ERP rather than build one. In that part of the business you rarely have a reason to be different from anyone else.

An ERP is excellent at recording what has already happened. It is weaker at everything that happens beforehand.

The work before anything becomes a document

A large part of the day-to-day coordination in a business happens before a single document exists.

A customer asks whether Friday is possible. Sales asks the warehouse. The warehouse is short and asks purchasing. Purchasing rings the supplier. The supplier can do it, but at a different price. Someone needs to sign off a sale below the usual margin.

None of that is a delivery note or an invoice yet, so the ERP has no place for it. Once the deal is done, the outcome goes into the system. The route to the outcome stays in calls and messages.

The effects show up every day:

• nobody knows where a request stands without phoning someone
• when the person who arranged something is off sick, the arrangement goes with them
• a few months later, nobody knows why that customer got that particular discount
• the same query gets solved from scratch each time, because the last solution was never written down

Signs that work is flowing around the ERP

If more than two of these sound familiar, part of your business is living outside the system you paid for:

• data is exported to Excel to sort something out, then keyed back in by hand
• individuals keep their own spreadsheets “to have an overview”
• every department has its own group in a messaging app
• lists are printed out and ticked off with a pen
• “has that been approved?” is asked several times a day

Three possible routes

Configure the existing ERP properly

Sometimes a module for what you are missing already exists in your ERP, but nobody set it up or people don’t know it is there. That is the cheapest outcome and the place to start. Ask your vendor specifically, with an example from your own business, not in general terms.

An add-on module from the same vendor

This makes sense when the process is fairly standard and the module covers it well. Check two things: how licences are charged as the number of users grows, and whether the module follows your way of working or you end up following it.

A system alongside the ERP, connected to it

When the coordination is exactly what sets you apart — how you prepare quotes, run field work or approve exceptions — a separate system for that part is worth having. The ERP stays the book of record, while the new system runs the route to the document and hands it the finished result.

There is one condition, and it should be checked before any agreement: the ERP must allow access to its data, through an API or at least a documented import and export. If the vendor does not allow that, better to know now than halfway through a project.

What not to do

Don’t replace the ERP just because coordination is missing. A new ERP will bring the same problem, only after another data migration and another round of training. Replacing an ERP is a big decision, and it only makes sense when the bookkeeping and record-keeping side itself no longer serves the business.

Designing and building a system that works alongside the ERP instead of replacing it is part of the work described on our CRM and ERP systems page. If you are not sure which of the three routes is yours, get in touch. We will look at how the work flows today before suggesting anything.