ERP Rescue Consultant, Australia

When an Australian ERP project needs a rescue

The point at which a project needs a rescue is not always obvious from inside it. Status reports stay optimistic, everyone is busy, and each new problem looks fixable on its own. Looking at the pattern helps. These are the signs that suggest an Australian project has moved beyond ordinary difficulty:

• A staged rollout went live at the first site or state, and the remaining sites keep being postponed because the first one still is not stable.
• The BAS has been prepared from spreadsheets since go-live, and nobody can say when the system will produce it directly.
• Payroll journals post to the wrong cost centers or sites, so job costs and branch results cannot be used.
• Stock figures diverge from physical counts at one warehouse after another.
• Variations keep arriving from the partner, but the original scope is still unfinished and the budget is gone.
• Staff have gone back to MYOB, Xero or the legacy system for day-to-day work.

When several of these show up together, more effort on the existing plan rarely helps, because the plan itself rests on assumptions that no longer hold. The failed ERP implementation page explores the common root causes, and the ERP recovery service page describes the overall method.

First steps: protecting BAS, payroll and trading

Before anyone discusses what went wrong, the business has to keep operating and meeting its obligations. A rescue therefore begins with operational first aid, agreed with your finance lead, BAS agent and payroll provider.

Activity statements. If the system's GST reporting cannot yet be trusted, your BAS agent decides how the next statement will be prepared and checked. A common approach is to reconcile GST from the ledger against invoice and bill listings and document every adjustment. If earlier statements may be affected, your agent decides what, if anything, needs revising.

Payroll. Pay runs and STP reporting usually continue through the payroll system without disruption. The risk is downstream: journals landing in the wrong accounts or sites. A simple reconciliation after each pay run catches that until the mapping is fixed.

Suppliers and customers. Payment files, remittances and customer invoices get checked first, because mistakes there damage relationships outside the business.

Workarounds. Every temporary spreadsheet or manual step is listed with an owner and an end condition, so that interim fixes do not quietly become permanent.

With that in place, the team has room to focus on the project itself instead of firefighting each morning.

Building a clear picture across sites and teams

An Australian rescue can involve people spread across several states and sometimes a partner team offshore. Getting a reliable picture means hearing from all of them and then checking what they say against the system.

I hold separate conversations with directors, the internal project lead, finance, warehouse and branch managers, key users and the partner's consultants. Talking one at a time lets people say what they would not say in a group meeting. Then I test what matters most: a sale from quote through to cash, a purchase from order to payment, a stock transfer between states, a pay run journal and the month-end close.

For staged rollouts, the result is a site-by-site status:

• what is live at each location and how well it is working;
• what is preventing the next site from going live;
• which issues are common to every site and which are local;
• what data still sits in the old system.

Every open item is then sorted by impact on the business: blocking operations, needed soon, no longer worth doing, or disputed between you and the partner. That single list, written in neutral language and shared with both sides, replaces the competing versions of events that usually surround a troubled project. If an outside view is all you need for now, the ERP second opinion covers this step on its own.

Partner agreements and variations

Implementation arrangements in Australia often combine a software subscription with the vendor, a services agreement with the partner and a series of statements of work and variations. When a project struggles, what was actually promised becomes important. I am not a lawyer, and your lawyer should advise on rights and obligations. What I provide is an organized working file.

The file sets each piece of contracted work against its current state, the variations that changed it and the invoices that charged for it. It then highlights the questions worth raising with your lawyer:

• whether the work was quoted as fixed price or charged by time, and what happens when an estimate is exceeded;
• how acceptance was meant to work, and whether any stage was formally signed off;
• what the partner assumed your team would provide, and whether it did;
• who owns configuration, custom development and documentation;
• what help the partner must give if the arrangement ends.

Where it can be done, the better outcome is a fresh set of priorities agreed with the existing partner rather than a dispute. A clear file makes that conversation faster, because everyone works from the same record. Should a replacement firm be required, ERP selection in Australia explains how candidates are compared fairly.

Deciding the path: finish, narrow or rebuild

Once operations are steady and the facts are agreed, directors can choose a path with their eyes open. The options paper I prepare describes each route in plain terms, with what it depends on, what could go wrong and what drives its cost.

Finish with the current partner. Suitable when the platform fits, the partner has capable people available and the working relationship can be reset around a shorter list of priorities.

Narrow the scope. Stabilize the sites and processes already live, defer the remaining rollout and add sites only once release criteria are met at the first one.

Hand over to another partner. When the product suits the business but the delivery team does not, the documentation and site status from the rescue become the new partner's brief.

Rebuild on another platform. Reserved for cases where testing shows the product cannot handle core needs, such as multi-site stock, job costing or your payroll arrangement.

I can continue as the client-side lead through recovery, running steering meetings, the issue log and the go/no-go decision for each further site, or hand over a plan your team runs. Everything is delivered remotely across Australian time zones, with site visits by arrangement. When the system is live and functioning but falls short, begin with the Australian ERP audit. More on my wider work is on ERP consulting in Australia and the Australia hub.