ERP Rescue Consultant, Nigeria

How Nigerian ERP projects come off the rails

When a Nigerian ERP project is in trouble, the evidence usually reaches the finance director's desk before it reaches the steering committee. The typical picture after a difficult go-live looks something like this:

• Withholding tax credits recorded in the old system were not carried across properly, and nobody can say which are still owed.
• Staff enter their own exchange rates on purchases and sales, so stock costs and margins vary for no business reason.
• Several bank accounts are unreconciled, unidentified receipts are growing and customers dispute their balances.
• All depots went live on the same day, some lost connectivity in the first days and fell back on paper that has not been entered.
• The implementer's ticket list keeps growing, and invoices for further work arrive in dollars.

Behind these symptoms there are usually familiar root causes. Requirements focused on features rather than Nigerian essentials such as withholding, multi-bank receipts, rate control and outages. Data was migrated from Sage, QuickBooks or spreadsheets without a full reconciliation. Testing took place at head office on a good connection. Payment milestones were tied to dates or activities rather than to accepted results.

None of this is solved by finding someone to blame. It is solved by restoring control in the areas that hurt most, then rebuilding the plan on facts. My general ERP recovery method provides the structure; below is how it is applied in Nigeria.

A quick and neutral assessment

The opening phase of a rescue is about establishing the real position before any decision is taken. In Nigeria there is good reason to move quickly: every month of disorder adds tax, reconciliation and stock work, and a dollar-priced contract can become more expensive in naira terms while the project stands still.

I speak separately with the sponsor, the finance director, operations and depot leads, key users, the internal project manager and the implementer's lead. Each conversation is confidential enough for people to be candid. I then review the proposal, contract, statement of work, payment milestones, change requests and the open ticket list, and test the core processes in the live system: order to invoice, receipt to bank reconciliation, purchase to payment with withholding, depot transfers and month-end.

The written assessment answers a few direct questions:

1. What was agreed, and what did each side assume?
2. What has been built, and what works with real transactions?
3. Which problems block cash, tax filings, stock control or reporting today?
4. Which requirements were never written down at all?
5. What has been paid against what has been accepted?

The assessment is shared with management and the implementer together. It is often the first time both sides work from the same list, and that alone changes the tone. Where the board only needs this independent view before deciding, the second opinion page describes it as a standalone engagement.

Keeping tax filings, bank reconciliations and rates under control

Some obligations do not pause for a troubled project. With your finance team, accountant and tax advisor I put interim routines in place so the business stays compliant while the system is fixed.

VAT and withholding. Known tax setup errors are listed, affected transactions are identified, and the figures for each return are prepared from verified data with sign-off by the accountant. Withholding credits from the old system are reconciled to a single schedule so none are lost. Your tax advisor decides the treatment of any corrections; I make sure the records are complete and organized in time.

Bank reconciliations. Accounts that have fallen behind are reconciled in an agreed order, usually the busiest collection accounts first. Unidentified receipts are cleared with sales and depot staff, customer statements are corrected and the matching rules, payment references and statement imports are fixed so the problem does not rebuild.

Exchange rates. Rate entry is locked down to the source management and the accountant agreed, overrides require approval, and transactions posted at unexplained rates are listed for review and correction. Revaluation is run consistently at period end.

Each routine has an owner, and it is retired only when the system produces reliable figures without it. Once a clean month-end has been achieved, attention shifts to the remaining processes, as described under go-live support. For the underlying design of currency handling, see multi-currency ERP.

Designing the recovery around power and connectivity

Power cuts and unstable networks are part of normal operations for many Nigerian businesses, so a recovered ERP must work in those conditions rather than in an ideal one. The rescue therefore includes a resilience plan, built with your IT lead and the implementer.

It starts with hosting. If the system runs on a server at head office, I look at what happens when power or the internet link fails: are users at depots cut off, is there a tested restore from backup, and who is responsible? If it runs in the cloud, the questions shift to connectivity at each site, performance from distant locations and the arrangements for backups and data export. Data protection obligations around hosting are noted for whoever handles them in your company.

Then each depot or branch gets a practical outage routine: which transactions can continue offline or on controlled paper forms, how they are entered once the link returns, who checks for gaps and duplicates, and how stock is reconciled after a long interruption.

Where depots went live together and struggled, the safer course is normally to bring the remaining or failing sites back in a planned sequence, starting with those that have the most reliable connectivity and strongest local supervisors. Each site goes live only after its routine has been tested in real conditions. The implementation consultant page for Nigeria explains how depot cutovers are ideally planned from the start.

Implementer, contract and the way forward

Once finance is under control, the conversation with the implementer can become constructive. Keeping the current implementer on a reset baseline is often the quickest route. I facilitate that reset neutrally, using the assessment as the shared reference: outstanding work is classified as essential, deferrable, unnecessary or disputed, disputed items are checked against the contract documents and a revised plan with owners and acceptance criteria is agreed.

Payment terms deserve attention in that reset. Milestones tied to accepted results, rather than to dates or effort, protect both sides, and the currency of future invoices should be explicit. I describe the commercial options; the decision is yours.

If the implementer cannot continue, the handover is planned so nothing is lost: administrator access and hosting under your control, custom code and configuration documented, licenses that may run through the implementer identified and the open issue list passed on intact.

I review the contract against what was delivered and record the facts, gaps and ambiguities. Questions of breach, withheld payment, refunds or termination belong to your lawyer.

Finally the board picks a path. Pressing on unchanged, shrinking the first phase, bringing in another implementer and, if core Nigerian needs would demand heavy custom code, choosing a new platform are all set out with what each requires. Some months after stability returns, an ERP audit is a sensible way to test that the repairs have lasted. My other remote services for Nigerian companies are listed on the Nigeria overview and the ERP consultant page for Nigeria.