ERP Requirements Consultant, Ireland

Group template plus an Irish delta

When a parent company already runs an ERP, its requirements list often arrives in Dublin, Cork or Galway as a finished document. Signing it as it stands leaves Irish obligations to chance; rewriting it from scratch wastes the group's work. I structure the Irish specification as a delta: the group template stays intact as the core, and every Irish addition sits in clearly marked rows with a reason attached.

Each row records what the system must do, where the need comes from, who raised it, its priority band and what a tester would have to observe to accept it. A row about the VAT treatment of a cross-border service, for example, names the tax advisor as its source and describes the posting and report output expected. A row about approval limits names the group's control framework.

For Irish-owned companies without a parent template, the same register is built from the process work alone. Either way the register is organized by process: order to cash, procure to pay, inventory and distribution, projects or production where relevant, record to report, and the payroll boundary. The method behind it is on the ERP requirements gathering page, and the document style follows my BRD consulting conventions. Keeping core and delta apart also makes the later fit-gap review cheaper, because only the Irish rows need fresh analysis against the template.

Revenue-facing rows a tester can tick off

Statutory needs belong in the register as rows with observable outcomes rather than a promise of local compliance. Typical Irish rows include:

• VAT codes produce the figures your advisor uses for the periodic return, and a report reconciles code totals to the ledger.
• Sales of goods and services to EU businesses feed the EU sales listing, with customer VAT numbers validated on the record.
• Where your trade volumes require it, Intrastat data such as commodity codes and country of origin is held on items and transactions.
• Where Relevant Contracts Tax applies, payments to subcontractors apply the deduction Revenue notifies for each one, and the records support the returns your advisor makes.
• Payroll is processed by your provider, which handles real-time reporting to Revenue; the ERP receives the payroll journal at the agreed level of detail.
• Records and supporting documents can be retained and retrieved for the period your advisor specifies.
• Euro and sterling transactions revalue correctly for trade with Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

E-invoicing deserves a forward-looking row. Ireland, like the wider EU, is moving toward structured e-invoicing and digital reporting, and public bodies may already expect structured invoices. The register asks each vendor how its product sends and receives structured invoices, for example over Peppol, rather than fixing a date. Every Revenue-facing row is confirmed by your tax advisor before release.

Hosting, data transfer, controls and remote sites

A specification that stops at business processes leaves the technical behavior of the system unwritten. A separate block of rows covers it.

Data protection comes first. The rows state where production data and backups may sit, whether personal data may be processed outside the EEA and on what documented basis, which subprocessors are acceptable, and what the processing agreement must cover. Your data protection officer sets the position and the register records it.

Group subsidiaries also need control rows. Where the parent works under formal internal control rules, for example because it is listed in the US, approval evidence, segregation of duties and change logs on master data become requirements in their own right. Single sign-on with the group identity platform usually belongs here as well.

Employee data needs care too. Activity logs, time capture and user reports should be configurable and documented, so the transparency information given to staff under GDPR stays accurate, and any arrangement with a union or employee forum can be respected in configuration.

Finally, performance and availability rows describe response times during the group close, behavior for depots, construction sites or field engineers on patchy connections, and backup and restore expectations. Exporters that issue customer documents in other European languages also list each output with its language and the native speaker on the team who checks it.

Interfaces, data takeover and priority bands

An interface named in one word, such as "bank" or "payroll", tells a vendor almost nothing. Each interface row in the register states the sending and receiving systems, what starts the exchange, which fields move, how often, who owns it and where a failed message is reported. Typical Irish entries are bank statement and SEPA payment files, the payroll provider's journal, the group consolidation tool, a CRM, a web shop and any third-party warehouse. The technical side continues on the ERP integration page.

Data takeover rows say which customers, suppliers and items come across, how much transaction history is worth bringing, how opening balances are agreed with the auditors and how the outgoing package stays readable for Revenue queries after its license lapses.

Priority bands follow MoSCoW thinking without scoring: rows the business cannot go live without, rows needed soon after, rows worth having if they are cheap, and rows parked for a later phase. Revenue-facing rows start in the first band. In a group setting, the parent and the Irish finance lead agree the bands together, which avoids the late surprise of a local need the group treated as optional. Disqualifying rows for the tender are drawn from the first band only.

Tenders, contracts, version control and common gaps

Once released, the register is attached to the tender. Irish and UK partners alike reply row by row using fixed response codes and comments, so their answers can be laid side by side. The tender mechanics are covered under ERP RFP consulting, and the comparison of bidders continues on my ERP selection page for Ireland.

The contract or statement of work should cite the released version, and the partner's design documents should map back to its rows. Anything a partner described as standard in its reply should not later appear as chargeable development. During testing, each row is followed to its UAT script and recorded result.

Every release carries a version label, a release date, a named owner and a change log entry. The Irish financial controller signs the statutory rows, process owners sign their sections and the group sponsor signs the whole.

Specifications for Irish entities tend to be exposed in the same places: RCT left out because the template came from a group with no construction activity, no row for the payroll journal, data transfer questions unanswered, sterling handling assumed, and no plan to keep old records readable. Each of these is checked before the register goes out. Delivery happens online, with any visit by arrangement, and no vendor or partner pays me a commission. See my work in Ireland.