What are the most common reasons for missing deadlines in an ERP project?

I agree with scope creep, but the others are not so prevalent in my experience. In addition to scope creep, these are the reasons why ERP projects (or in fact any projects), miss deadlines: - Poor planning in advance - Bad data - Missing or ineffective change management - Lack of engagement from the business

While it is easy to generalize scope creep as a major contributor towards delays, it is important to understand that the scope creep happens when the business objectives of the implementation are not being realised, so fundamentally it's a gap in what needed to be done in the first place. If all the stakeholders invest enough time upfront in understanding the business processes and objectives that need to be operationalized and realised through the ERP being implemented, scope creep can be prevented at a later stage.

Scope creep is the worest reason for missing deadlines in an ERP project and that came from, 1- Lack of ERP Consultant experience: consultant offer to customize some standard ERP cycles. 2- Lack of business process mapping: many of business owners ask for his requirements only without integration points. 3- Lack of detailed project documentation: many Fit-Gab Document that illustrate ERP business process could not list all business owner’s requirements. 4- Lack of integration scenario (use cases). That when any of the above happen we will face: 1- Hidden business process. 2- Wrong requirement analysis. 3- A lot of customization process which will lead to increase cost of support.

An immense hurdle of successful ERP delivery is the fact that sales teams over sell capabilities and slash budgets to get the win. This puts the delivery team at a disadvantage from day one and sets the program up for failure. Integration of delivery expertise in the sales cycle is necessary for success. Set proper expectations from first engagement and then manage to them.

An ERP Implementation is a messy project and there is so much of communication required to actually do a single task/feature from multiple stakeholders. It has high chances of failure if there is communication gap. To handle this a project management and communication tool needs to be established from the day 1. A Project Manager/Champion/lead has the liability to facilitate communication.

By definition an ERP project is a huge undertaking that will take a long time to deliver successfully. A number of constraints including priorities, resources, scope, requirements and risks will change in the middle of the project and impact the schedule. One way to preserve the schedule is to make the project an absolute priority for the organisation which means throwing everything at it including board and executive support and involvement. And willingness to see to it that appropriate resources are allocated to the project. This is possible when the alignment to the strategic objectives is clear and undisputed. A difficult scenario to build but possible with strong sponsorship.

1- Poor communication 2- changing in top management reporting requirements 3- poor understanding of ERP interrelationships 4- no clear vision for the system output

Establish a well defined requirements baseline. Any customer or unexpected changes to baseline requirements should be rescoped to understand any cost and schedule impacts. A new baseline is then signed off by all parties with an understanding of new expectations for cost and scheduled completion. Having a good scheduling system along with measurable milestones is key to a successful projects, on time, within cost completion.

Poor Communication. Its is top most common issue that ERP due to different changes many time miss guide during work. And also miss guide about different errors which are understanding to much complicated.

As per my experience, the pool of resources available for the ERP project will make a significant impact on the overall project experience. I have seen where ever a resources are hired from industry and when they trained to be an ERP consultant makes a huge contribution than an individual trained to be an ERP consultant from the very beginning of their career. This difference could be the beginning of on-boarding inadequate resources to the ERP project. Most importantly the resources who are hired to the project MUST be passionate about what are they doing and the implementation project must be their passion project too.

ERP Implementations are tough. It is not just installing a software solution. Companys need to assign a budget before going into transformation. That way the scope of the project can be decided perfectly, and the resources can be allocated. ERPs and work related to it is not a one time thing, it will keep on going as far as the organisation go. Hence effective resource planning is must.

The likelihood of being impeded by a skills shortage should be assessed before the start of the project and action to avoid this taken early. Outline any re-skilling and training programmes required and ensure that you partner with a specialist recruiter rather than a mainstream one. Also, don't underestimate the costs of skilled contractors.

Based on my experience, the primary issue is often inadequate resources from the client's side. The client project team is usually occupied with their current workloads, which prevents them from testing the system, for example. There's also a lack of engagement and commitment to deliver tasks on time. Additionally, the client's project sponsor is often not involved in the project.

Organizations routinely underestimate the amount of effort required by internal stakeholders to achieve success. Not only do you need to have staff available to work with an implementation partner to define business processes (in a perfect world, SMEs are 100% focused on the project with their day job backfilled), but there also needs to be ongoing change management activities - redefining job roles, communicating changes to staff, system testing, and more - which is no small task either.

Another factor of success in a project is precisely this topic, a well-delivered training at the right time, with the ideal content for each role and area is key. It is different to train a team before they use the system on a daily basis, than to reinforce a training after a month of use. It is different for the consultant to train the users than for a group of key users to train their peers. It is different to train with fictitious data than to train with real data.

Involve the super users early, duirng the implementation so on the job training, use the training tools available so in SAP use Best practice demo systems and the tutorials that cover the best practice processes, for any custom work create your own material. Also ensure that you provide a sandbox system for users to play in

The biggest hurdle to a successful ERP transition is often fear of change and lack of user adoption specially in Greenfield approaches. The unwillingness of users to contribute extra effort towards building something meaningful often comes from a lack of communication from the implementation team who have failed to bring the users on board. It is critical for the entire organisation to be on one page and understand that it is not enough to simply install an ERP solution, the entire organisation must make the process meaningful and full of enthusiasm to implement best practices which will help the company long-term.

Before an organization begins an ERP implementation, they should have a plan and vision for how they will maintain the ERP system once live. Key internal resources who will be ultimately responsible for maintaining the system post go-live should be an integral part of the implementation project. I advocate for basic, conceptual and functional system training for these participants prior to design sessions to inform the process and then, later in the project near go-live, more advanced system training that will be applicable to getting through the critical post-go-live period. Additionally, I always try to negotiate knowledge transfer hours into any third-party implementation services agreement to provide that extra support to the team.

Lack of Training. It's trained person like who's considered most expert person to humself is confused everytime during working errors and issues. Anytime training required as per work flow.

In my experience, vendors often highlight and sell the flexible integrability of their software. If the customer has not done thorough discovery on their requirements, capabilities of legacy systems, and underlying and disparate data models, then project teams run into issues trying to integrate modern cloud-based technologies with legacy, poorly supported on-premise systems. This can result in significant time delays, overly complex data conversion requirements, customized workarounds and at worst, show-stopping failures at go-live resulting in painful hyper care periods.

In my opinion several factors can contribute to missing deadlines in an ERP project. But I believe, mostly complexities in ERP system customization, integration with existing systems, data migration, and performance optimization can pose technical challenges that delay project milestones. Besides, ineffective communication among project stakeholders, including team members, managers, clients, and external partners, can lead to misunderstandings, conflicting priorities, and delays in decision-making.

As the ERP space continues to evolve, software vendors are creating new functionality, restructuring modules into 'purpose built' applications and many other rapid changes. This results in organizations trying to implement bleeding edge technologies that are not mature, poorly documented and more difficult to implement than estimated.

- Security issues - Limitation in performances - Data migration complexities - Integration challenges - Bugs and defects Project managers can reduce the risk of scope creep and guarantee the project's successful completion by proactively addressing technical challenges and their possible impact on the project scope.

I work in the SAP space and this is common but avoidable. Engage Skilled Professionals: Assemble a skilled and experienced team, including SAP-certified consultants and specialists. Invest in training for existing staff to ensure they are familiar with the new SAP landscape. Also consider hiring external experts for critical tasks if necessary. Pilot Programs and Prototyping: Is the second area so Implement pilot programs or prototypes to test the new SAP solution in a controlled environment. Identify and address any technical issues or bottlenecks during the pilot phase before full-scale implementation.

I've seen projects get oversold in competitive situations, implementation budgets are squeezed to win the deal. The sales team is happy, but the delivery team is left with compressed time and resources to deliver.

In my opinion the problem in the ERP environments are deeper than what is seen on the surface. Some of the reasons that I have experienced in ERP programs are Lack of understanding Lack of stakeholder and exec alignment Lack of engagement at the right levels Culture ! Or the lack of it Lack of reality check One of the most common ones is to treat is like an IT project This is in addition to lack of knowledge in the broad team , lack of leadership or project management , lack or not effective communication and many more. If this needs to change we need to actively work together to change it. If success needs to be the normal it requires investment from all parties. Working together with clear understanding and common goal is the key

Unrealistic expectations: Clients often have unrealistic expectations from the system, especially those who haven’t participated in a recent transformational projects.

In a typical ERP Implementation, Firms always emphasize results rather than Resources, Time & Effort. Hence, Consultants were obligated to work on multiple assignments simultaneously without having time to breathe. The manager focuses primarily on outcomes/results, and fails to leverage the power of human effort. It may sound too ideal to say that to get the best advantage, we need to look at the human beings who work within a business as having more than just a superficial relationship. But this is not a mere deal. The irony of emphasizing results or encouraging this kind of results-oriented culture, is that doing so contributes to a greater overall lack of accountability, which obviously leads to missing deadlines.

Missing Risk tracker including critical milestones and go live stopper list got to be understood and continue to manage risk helps. Decision making and acceptance criteria