ERP implementation and custom modules

Why ERP projects go wrong

The process document describes the approved process. The plant runs the real one, which contains six exceptions that exist because a customer is important, a machine is unreliable, or a supplier is unpredictable. Those exceptions are not sloppiness — they are the business working around reality, and the ERP has to accommodate them or the staff will work around the ERP.

What happens next is predictable. Data entry gets done at the end of the week from a notebook. The stock figure in the system stops matching the stock on the floor. Within a year the ERP is an expensive reporting system fed by the same spreadsheets it was bought to replace.

The second failure mode is customising too early. A team hits friction in month two, requests a modification, gets it, and repeats — until the system is so far from standard that upgrading is impossible and every change needs the original vendor. The discipline is to run standard for a full cycle before customising anything, so you can tell the difference between a genuine gap and an unfamiliar habit.

How we approach it

We start on the floor, not in the conference room. Two to three weeks watching the actual process, talking to the people who enter the data and to the people who ignore the system, and writing down the exceptions. That document is the real specification, and it is worth having whether or not you proceed with any ERP at all.

Then we map it against the standard product. Most of it fits. The parts that do not become a short, deliberate list of custom modules, built as clean extensions rather than as modifications to core — so the platform can still be upgraded afterwards.

We work with ERPNext and Odoo where an open platform suits, and we build custom modules alongside SAP, Microsoft Dynamics or Tally where the estate is already committed. We do not resell licences, so we have no commission riding on which one you choose.

Migration and cutover

Data migration is where the schedule usually goes. Fifteen years of records contain duplicate masters, part numbers with three spellings, transactions against customers who no longer exist, and stock adjustments nobody can explain. Cleaning that is a business exercise with a technical component, not a technical exercise, and it needs someone on your side who is allowed to make decisions.

We run parallel for at least one full cycle — both systems live, both producing the month-end numbers, and every difference investigated rather than explained away. Cutover happens when the two agree, not when the plan says it should.