ERP Rescue Consultant, Ireland

How an Irish ERP project slides into trouble

Few projects fail on one bad decision. In Ireland the pattern is often a mix of local and group pressures that nobody owned end to end:

• The Irish entity was placed on a group template designed elsewhere, and local needs such as Irish VAT treatment, Relevant Contracts Tax or sterling trade were treated as minor tweaks.
• The partner's team sits partly in another country, consultants rotate, and decisions made in one workshop are reopened in the next.
• Go-live was set to match a group calendar rather than the readiness of the data, so testing was cut short.
• The old package was kept running as a safety net and never switched off, so staff now key transactions twice.
• Nobody on the Irish side had the time or authority to make design calls quickly, and gaps filled with assumptions.

None of these is anyone's fault alone. Clients, partners and parents all contribute, which is why I keep a rescue focused on facts and next steps rather than on blame. A calm, shared view of how the project got here makes the recovery conversation far easier. If the system is live and broadly working but disappointing, the ERP audit for Ireland may be the better starting point.

Establishing the facts before anyone changes course

When confidence has gone, every party tends to hold its own version of events. The sponsor believes the partner overpromised, the partner believes requirements kept moving, and key users believe nobody listened to them. All three may be partly right. A recovery needs one account that each side can recognize.

I build it from several sources. I speak with sponsors, finance, operations, the internal project lead, the partner's project manager and, for a subsidiary, the relevant people at group, each separately so they can talk openly. I read the contract and statement of work, requirements, design notes, the plan, the change log and the issue list. Then I look at the system itself: what is configured, which processes work end to end, how far data has been migrated and how it reconciles.

The output is a short written status report in plain English: what was agreed, what was built, what the business needs now, and where the three diverge. It names the root causes, such as thin requirements, missing decisions or poor data, without pointing fingers at individuals. Everyone involved sees the same document before options are discussed, which is often the first time in months that the client, the partner and the parent have worked from the same page. The general method is described under ERP recovery.

Keeping VAT returns and month-end on track meanwhile

A struggling project does not stop the calendar. VAT returns still go to Revenue, payroll journals still arrive, and the parent still expects its monthly pack. Often the most urgent part of a rescue is agreeing how those obligations are met while the system is unreliable.

I work with your accountant or tax advisor to set an interim routine. Typical questions are: which system is the book of record for this period, how sales and purchases keyed in two places are kept from being counted twice, how the VAT return figures are assembled and checked, and how sterling balances are revalued if the new system cannot yet do it. The answers are written down as a temporary procedure, with the person responsible for each step and the point at which it will be retired.

Data problems are handled in the same practical way. Open customer and supplier items, VAT numbers, bank details and opening balances that came across wrongly are listed, fixed in order of impact and reconciled back to the old system. Your accountant decides the treatment of any adjustment; I make sure each one has an owner and a check. Once one month-end and one VAT period close cleanly, confidence starts to return, which matters as much as any technical fix. My go-live support page covers the checklist used once the project is back on course.

Working with the partner, the parent and the contract

Most recoveries succeed with the existing partner once both sides accept a new baseline. I help prepare that conversation by sorting the remaining work into items needed to run the business, items that can follow later, items no longer needed and items in dispute. Disputed points are taken back to the original scope documents and their business impact, not to whoever argues hardest. The aim is a revised plan with named responsibilities and checkpoints that the partner can commit to and the board can monitor.

Where the Irish company belongs to a group, the parent has a seat at that table. Group IT may own the template, group finance may own the chart of accounts, and both may need to agree changes. I make sure their decisions are recorded alongside local ones, so the Irish team is not left waiting for approvals nobody requested.

Sometimes the relationship cannot be repaired, or the partner lacks the capacity the project needs. In that case I help plan a controlled handover to a new partner, protecting the design, data and documents that can be reused. I review the contract, statement of work and change orders to highlight commercial issues such as acceptance, payment milestones, ownership of custom code and exit terms. The legal reading and any negotiation strategy stay with your solicitor.

Continue, re-scope or change platform

The rescue ends in a decision, and there are only a few honest options. Continuing with adjustments suits a project whose platform and partner are sound but whose plan and governance slipped. Re-scoping suits one that tried to do too much at once: a smaller first go-live covering the Irish core of finance, sales and purchasing, with group extras or extra entities following later. Changing platform is occasionally right, usually when the product genuinely cannot support how the business trades, and it is never a decision to take in a crisis meeting.

Each path is described in terms of trading, reporting, staff workload and the relationship with the parent, along with the main cost drivers: remaining partner effort, licenses already committed, internal time, data work and the cost of running two systems for longer. I do not attach invented figures. Management and the board weigh the options; I make sure the trade-offs are visible.

Once a path is chosen, the recovery plan sets out decision rights, a single integrated schedule, a risk log and regular status reporting. I can stay on remotely to run it with your team, with visits by arrangement, or hand it over to your internal lead. For the wider context see my ERP consultant page for Ireland, the guide to fixing a failed implementation and the Ireland overview.