5 Common Mistakes That Delay or Even Stop ERP Implementation Projects – And How to Avoid Them

Implementing an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system is one of the most transformative and strategic moves a company can make to optimize operations, streamline processes, and gain visibility across departments. But while ERP systems promise efficiency and integration, ERP implementations are also complex, involving many stakeholders, business process changes, and technical setups. That why implementation ERP is not only IT team project but rather the whole company projects that need to taken seriously.

Unfortunately, many ERP implementation projects get delayed—or worse, stopped entirely—because of preventable mistakes. Oh no... but this should not stop you, because we notice quite often those failures are quite often happened because of poor of project implementation on the whole process. Quite often the mistakes could cause by the vendor, or clients or might be both as well. That why on this article, our team would like to share from our 20+ years experience in ERP implementation that we can learn from those mistakes story and how to avoid them. But first, we need to know what is the ERP Implementation process.

🔄 Understanding the ERP Implementation Process

To provide context, here’s a simplified breakdown of a typical ERP implementation process:

1. Project Preparation & Vendor Selection – Define your business process scopes, form internal ERP key teams, select the right ERP product and then select appropriate ERP implementation partner that fit on what you needed. This step is very crucial because wrong on this first step, could lead domino effects on next step.

2. Business Process Review (Blueprinting) – Deep dive into current business processes, define gaps, and design new workflows. You need to write the complete project solution blueprint that would be agreed on both client teams and ERP vendor teams. This is to avoid any misunderstanding, gaps, or disputes on futures.

3. System Configuration & Development – Configure the ERP according to blueprint; build custom functions if needed. This is the longest phase, that why we recommended to have weekly meeting on this stage to ensure that we shared the progress of project on weekly basis.

4. Data Migration & Integration – Clean, prepare, and migrate master and transactional data into the ERP system. This is more on clients key team to ensure the data that given to vendor team are final and accurate. Otherwise, you would be on loop on this stage that caused the delay on project.

5. User Acceptance Testing (UAT) – Ensure the system works as intended through rigorous testing. This also crucial on this stage for the client key team to test the system using their daily business cases. That why it need some time to prepare for this.

6. Training & Change Management – Equip users with knowledge and skills to operate the new system. One of the big issues on the project is that "Scope Creeps" that cause project never go live. That why we need to ensure the change management is done appropriated.

7. Go-Live & Post-Go-Live Support – Launch the ERP system and stabilize the system with live data and real transactions. This step is require to discussion final plan about go live team support as well and also ending balance for data migration as well.

Now that we understand the phases, let’s examine the top 5 too-common mistakes that derail ERP implementations—especially those that lead to friction between the client and ERP vendor teams.

⚠️ Top 5 Common Mistakes That Delay or Stop ERP Projects

1. ❌ Lack of Clear Scope and Objectives

Situation: The client doesn’t define the project’s scope and objectives in detail. Some key departments are unclear about what they really want the ERP to achieve. In the end of the day, it is the client team business process. That why the client team need to have internal discussion to finalized the scopes and objectives on the ERP implementation.

Cause: Rushing to sign the deal and start without thorough business analysis. Or lack internal discussion to have final agreement to all parties because project ERP is inter connected all departments one and another.

Impact: Scope creep, misalignment, and endless change requests—causing project delays, rising costs, and frustration on both sides. This is quite dangerous and need to avoid at all costs. That why the objectives and scopes need to be final. Imagine that you asking your construction team to build your house but you don't have final plan in term what do you want your house looks like. You can imagine this is somewhat similar like that.

2. ❌ Internal Team is Not Fully Committed

Situation: The internal project team from the client’s side is frequently unavailable or has low involvement, often treating ERP as a side task. This should be red flag that the ERP vendor team should raise this to project steering. This attitude is quite often will lead into disaster. At Think tank, we remembered where one time the clients did not want to read the detail on our tasks but rather to trust our team agreed with it. Then our project manager raised this issues during the steering meeting because this quite often become the issues on later on. In the end of the day, this to avoid any miscommunication. That why during our project solution, we have hundred and hundred pages on each business process to detail everything to avoid miscommunication.

Cause: Management doesn’t prioritize ERP as a strategic project. Key users are still consumed by daily operations. Sometime the key users think that ERP project is not important or they seeing as the IT project not their project where this was the biggest mistake. ERP implementation project should be treated as company big project that should be taken seriously to all parties because will impact all of their operations.

Impact: Delays in decision-making, feedback cycles get longer, UAT and training suffer, and the go-live gets pushed further. Quite often this could cause a lot of miscommunication where each party assume different things.

3. ❌ Unrealistic Timeline and Budget Expectations

Situation: The company sets an aggressive go-live target without understanding the full workload or complexity of their processes. This quite often happened because the client did not fully understand the whole ERP process that some stage on the ERP implementation would take some time and cannot be done parallel with other tasks.

Cause: Overconfidence or pressure from upper management to get it done “fast and cheap.” This would set a part of vendor with experience and not experience. At Think Tank, we would raise this issue on the stakeholder because it would setup wrong expectation. This need to be taken seriously to ensure everyone understand about it.

Impact: Cutting corners during blueprinting or testing, low system quality, data errors, and eventual breakdown during go-live. This would cause a lot of issues later on. At Think Tank, we recommend the client need to revise their timeline and budget to be realistic because otherwise the project would failed.

4. ❌ Incomplete or Dirty Data for Migration

Situation: Master data is scattered, outdated, or inconsistent across departments, and no one is responsible for cleansing it. This why during the project kickoff, our team Think Tank keep emphasizing that the client team need to commit on the project activities, such as : preparing master data and saldo balance during data migration. Wrong data given to vendor team, would cause repeating tasks where times would waste and cause project delays.

Cause: Lack of preparation and no dedicated resources for data validation and migration.This should be taken seriously to avoid many issues during go live. At Think Tank, we often mentioned this but still sometime it happened. When happened then started to realize what our team keep mentioning before during data master preparation.

Impact: System inconsistencies, reporting issues, errors in transactions, mistrust in the new ERP, and go-live failures. This for sure will create data delay because inaccurate data, misconfiguration and others.

5. ❌ Poor Communication Between Client and Vendor Teams

Situation: Misunderstandings pile up. The vendor assumes one thing, while the client expects another. Eventually, small misalignment on the project tasks or deliverables grow into disputes. This is quite often if your project run on by inexperience ERP team or the key users team too intimidate the team by setting unrealistic goals or refuse to have open communication on it. That why during this at Think Tank, we recommend that the project manager should be from client and vendor to communicate to resolve this.

Cause: No structured meeting rhythm, no clear point-of-contact, and assumptions instead of documented agreements. That why at Kick off project, Think Tank proposed our team communication channel about it to ensure the project are appropriately communicated at all stages.

Impact: Loss of trust, team frustration, dispute over deliverables, and in extreme cases—project termination. When this happened too many times, sometime the bad results might be expected. That why we recommend before this happened to immediately setup emergencies meeting to whole team to find solution together about it.

✅ How to Avoid These Mistakes

Ok enough about the nightmare during the ERP implementation. Learning those, should never stop you or make you afraid to do your ERP implementation. We believe at Think Tank Solusindo, you should learn from those mistakes that allow you to achieve your success on your ERP implementation. At Think Tank, having right ERP system is very crucial to scale your busienss and that why avoiding the ERP implementation should not be the case.

Avoiding these common pitfalls requires proactive planning, collaboration, and choosing the right ERP partner. Here's how to mitigate them:

• Define clear scope and success metrics from the beginning with detailed business process documentation. Quite often at Think Tank Solusindo, our team is given complete requirements from client from businesses process, companies Standard Operation Procedures from all departments, business issues and many others.

• Secure internal commitment from key users, supported by top management who communicate that ERP is a top priority. You need to get some input from all key parties on all departments.

• Plan realistic timelines and budgets based on actual workloads and process complexity—ERP is an investment, not a quick fix. On this step, you need to involved this with your vendor team if you not familiar with the ERP implementation process.

• Start data preparation early with a dedicated team and regular progress tracking for data cleansing and structure. Allocate enough time for your key users on each department to prepare this steps.

• Establish clear communication channels—weekly project meetings, clear escalation paths, and written documentation of all requirements and changes.

🤝 Why Choosing the Right ERP Partner Matters

These issues are not just technical—they are strategic. That’s why working with an experienced ERP implementation partner like Think Tank Solusindo is crucial. At Think Tank Solusindo, we have done almost 100+ project combine between implementation, improvement, modifications and have more than decades years as a team during ERP implementation project. So our team also has learn our fair shares mistakes during growing up as ERP team implementation partner for our client.

At Think Tank, we don’t just deliver systems. We walk with you end-to-end, from blueprinting to post-go-live support, ensuring that your ERP investment translates into real business value. That why at Think Tank, we have a lot of clients that right now has been go live their ERP system with us more than 10+ years and up until now, they are still on our support care team because our clients believe that ERP should be updated all the time as business changing from day to day basis. We’ve been trusted by companies across industries to rescue stuck projects, handle complex integrations, and bring clarity to chaos.

Let’s start with a free consultation — no commitment, no pressure. Just a conversation to help you explore what’s possible and what pitfalls to avoid.

📞 Talk to Think Tank Today

We invite business owners, C-level leaders, and project teams to reach out and start a discussion with our team Think Tank Solusindo, especially those who like to get some insight about ERP implementation. Let’s future-proof your business with a solid ERP foundation—your success is our mission.

🟢 Contact our team today to schedule a free, no-obligation discussion. You can visit us at https://8thinktank.com/ or Whatsapp our team at +62 857-1434-5189 to setup discussion with our ERP expert team.

#ERPImplementation #ThinkTankSolusindo #DigitalTransformation #ERPIndonesia #ERPProjectSuccess #BusinessEfficiency #SAPS4HanaPublicCloud #SAPBusinessOne #AcumaticaERP #ERPForManufacturing #ERPPartnerIndonesia #CLevelLeadership #ERPConsulting #EnterpriseGrowth