ERP Rescue Consultant, France

When the recette never seems to end

A French ERP project rarely collapses in one go. It loses momentum in recognizable ways:

• Acceptance testing runs round after round, each one producing new defects because test cases were never tied to clear acceptance criteria.
• A fixed-price contract meets a vague specification, and every disagreement becomes a debate about whether something was included, followed by another amendment.
• The integrator's consultants change, and design choices made months ago are reopened by newcomers who were not there.
• Lettrage, the FEC export or the link to the payroll provider's journals are left for the end and turn out to be harder than expected.
• The company's own key users are stretched between the project and their normal work, so decisions wait.

On a project that is already live, the signs are sharper: customer accounts that cannot be matched, invoices issued twice, a TVA return assembled by hand and an expert-comptable losing patience. In either case responsibility is usually shared. Thin requirements, optimistic planning, late decisions and difficult data tend to come from both sides of the table. A rescue that starts by allocating blame wastes the energy needed to fix things, so I start with facts instead. The underlying approach is described under ERP recovery.

An independent reading of where the project stands

Leadership usually receives two competing narratives: the integrator's progress report and the users' frustration. Neither is complete. My first task is a reading of the project that both the company and the integrator can recognize as fair.

To build it, I speak individually with the sponsor, the finance director, operational leads, key users and the integrator's project director. I read the contract, any specification documents, the plan, the amendments, the defect list and the minutes of steering committees. Then I go into the system: which processes run from start to finish, how far migration has progressed, how open items and balances reconcile, and what the latest test results really show.

The outcome is a concise written assessment covering what was agreed, what exists, what the company needs today and where those three differ, with root causes such as an unclear specification, missing decisions or data quality described plainly. It goes to leadership and the integrator at the same time. Often this is the first moment in months that both sides argue from the same document, which changes the tone of every meeting that follows. If leadership mainly wants an outside view before deciding anything, the independent second opinion page describes that lighter version.

Keeping the books closable with your expert-comptable

Whatever state the project is in, the company still has to close its months, file TVA returns and be able to produce its accounting records. When a go-live has gone badly, protecting those obligations comes before any discussion of scope.

I work with your expert-comptable and finance team to agree an interim routine. During the transition, where does each kind of entry officially live? How are invoices that exist in both the old and new systems prevented from being counted twice? How are the TVA figures assembled and checked before filing, including VAT on receipts for service activities? Each answer is written down with the person responsible and the date it will be retired.

Lettrage usually needs special attention. If open items came across as single balances, customer and supplier accounts need reconstructing item by item from the legacy ledger before payments can be matched and reminders sent. I organize that work with finance and the integrator, and the expert-comptable decides how adjustments are booked. The FEC follows the same logic: we agree when a complete, coherent export from the new system must be possible and test it before that point. Tax treatment and any corrections to returns already filed remain the accountant's decision. Once a full month closes properly, the checklist on my go-live support page takes over.

Fixed price, amendments, the CSE and your avocat

Many French ERP contracts are sold on a fixed-price basis against a specification that turns out to be thinner than either side assumed. The result is a stream of amendments and a growing gap between what the company thinks it bought and what the integrator thinks it owes. A recovery has to address that gap directly.

Using the status reading, I prepare a reset session with the integrator. Each remaining item is classified as needed to operate, deferrable, no longer wanted or disputed, and disputed items are examined against the signed documents and their business impact. The session ends with revised scope, acceptance criteria, named owners and checkpoints. The integrator has its own reason to agree, since clarity reduces its risk too.

I also read the contract, amendments and change orders and note the practical points that deserve legal attention: the acceptance procedure and what signing it would mean, payment stages, ownership of specific developments, reversibility and handover if the relationship ends. Your avocat interprets them and advises on negotiation; I do not give legal opinions. Where recovery changes how employees will work, for example a new rollout sequence or new monitoring reports, the company may need to inform or consult its CSE. HR and your lawyer decide; I make sure the question is raised in time rather than discovered at the last minute.

Carry on, cut back or change course

Once facts are agreed and the books are steady, leadership has to choose. Continuing with the same integrator and platform under a reset plan is often the most practical route when the product fits and the problems came from specification and governance. Reducing scope helps when the project tried to cover everything at once: finance, sales administration and purchasing first, with production, a second entity or advanced analytics afterward.

Changing integrator or platform is occasionally justified, for instance when the product needs extensive development to handle French accounting practice or the e-invoicing route, or when the integrator cannot staff the project. That step deserves a proper comparison, reusing requirements, test cases and cleaned data, never a decision made in anger.

The e-invoicing reform adds a constraint to every option. Whatever you choose, the company will need a working route to an approved platform when its obligations apply, so each option is assessed for how it gets there. For each path I describe the impact on finance, operations and staff and the main drivers of further spend, without inventing figures. Leadership decides, and I can then steer the plan remotely with your team. A stable but disappointing system calls for the lighter ERP audit for France instead. See also the implementation page for France and the France overview.