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Summary – An ill-framed ERP project sends costs soaring before a single line of code is written, with scope creep, insufficient specifications, fragmented governance, underestimated integrations and APIs, neglected cloud-on-prem impacts, and resistance to change. Vague KPIs, incomplete IT mapping, over-customization, and no training or communication plan exacerbate budget overruns and delay adoption.
Solution: anticipate from the analysis phase by defining a precise scope and measurable KPIs, structuring a steering committee, conducting an IT audit and API tests, planning cloud/on-prem compatibility, and implementing change management to control costs and maximize ROI.
Implementing or replacing an ERP is a major challenge for Swiss SMEs and mid-market companies: it’s not just about deploying software, but rethinking the architecture of processes, data, and governance.
Yet budget overruns most often occur before a single line of code is written: poor scoping, insufficient anticipation of integrations, underestimating the human impact, and lax governance rules. This article highlights the seven common mistakes that drive ERP costs through the roof and explains how to avoid them from the analysis phase onward, by adopting a comprehensive and structured approach.
Unclear Functional Scoping and Insufficient Governance
Undefined boundaries open the door to scope creep and costly mid-project adjustments. Fragmented project governance undermines rapid decision-making and budget control.
Lack of a Precise Requirements Document
Without a formalized document, business needs remain implicit and open to interpretation. Technical and functional teams may diverge on which features to develop, leading to partial or unsuitable deliverables.
This imprecision generates successive clarification requests, back-and-forth between consultants and users, and ultimately lengthens validation timelines. Every unplanned request adds specification, development, and testing costs.
An initial audit process—including cross-functional workshops with the CIO, business units, and executive management—yields a comprehensive ERP requirements document. Although this step requires upfront effort, it significantly limits scope changes and subsequent overruns.
Fragmented Project Governance
A steering committee spread across too many stakeholders leads to decision delays and unclear trade-offs. Informal or irregular steering meetings lack the responsiveness needed to address deviations quickly.
Sometimes, the roles of sponsor, functional lead, and project manager remain vague, each keeping their own priority list. This confusion creates priority clashes and delays in resolving issues and adjustments.
Establishing clear governance with a small steering committee and well-defined roles helps remove blockers faster. An experienced partner can structure the committee and facilitate meetings to safeguard both budget and timeline.
Poorly Defined Objectives and KPIs
When success indicators aren’t set from the start, it’s impossible to measure the project’s real progress. Vague or overly general metrics (e.g., “global user satisfaction”) fail to reflect productivity gains or cost reductions.
This lack of benchmarks often lets budget overruns slip by without early warnings. Some vendors may bill extra hours or extend the testing phase without the sponsor noticing.
By defining precise KPIs during the analysis phase (order processing time, accounting error rate, financial close duration), decision-makers can track the real impact of each milestone and trigger corrective actions before costs accumulate.
Poorly Anticipated Integrations and Mismanaged IT Ecosystem
Interface and API costs are often underestimated and can account for up to 40% of the total budget. Neglecting IT system mapping hides critical interconnections and hidden dependencies.
No System Landscape Documentation
Many companies treat the ERP as an isolated project without inventorying existing solutions (CRM, e-commerce, BI, WMS). This lack of a holistic view prevents anticipation of data flows and synchronization needs.
Without system mapping, teams discover missing interfaces or incompatible data formats mid-project, forcing on-the-fly connector development. Each unplanned connector incurs specification, development, and testing hours.
Conducting an initial IT audit that details all services, databases, and APIs allows you to plan necessary integrations from day one and accurately estimate their technical and functional effort.
Underestimated APIs and Connectors
To meet tight deadlines, some projects assume provided APIs are ready to use. In reality, documentation may be incomplete, performance unsatisfactory, or quotas too restrictive.
Without load testing and authentication protocol checks, technical teams encounter bottlenecks and reliability issues during acceptance testing. Late-requested fixes inflate the budget.
A quick prototyping and integration testing phase upfront validates API robustness and identifies tuning needs before embarking on large-scale development. Consult our REST API guide to structure your tests.
Neglected Cloud and On-Premises Compatibility
Some Swiss SMEs and mid-market companies still maintain on-premises servers for sovereignty or compliance reasons while implementing a SaaS ERP. Latency, security, or VPN issues may surface post-deployment.
This situation triggers unplanned adjustments: network upgrades, firewall configuration, gateway creation, or even additional server installations—each billed outside the original estimate.
Aligning cloud and on-premises architecture during the analysis phase, with network performance and security rule evaluations, avoids these hidden costs and ensures seamless synchronization between environments. Learn more about cloud migration.
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Ignoring Organizational Impact and Cultural Change
The “human” side of an ERP project weighs as much as the technical side: resistance to change, neglected training, and unredesigned business processes hinder adoption. Without rigorous support, users resist abandoning their old tools.
Insufficient Team Training
Training only administrators and leaving end users to fend for themselves leads to misuse errors and recurrent support requests. Each help desk call becomes a billable ticket or overloads the internal hotline.
Conversely, a role-based training plan (business, support, IT) ensures progressive skill development. Hands-on sessions and tutorial videos help flatten the learning curve.
Investing in post-go-live support, with a designated business referent, reduces operational errors and stabilizes adoption rates in the first weeks of operation.
Underestimated User Resistance
Employees attached to their routines often view the ERP as added complexity. If they’re not involved in functional decisions, they resist new processes and create unauthorized workarounds.
This leads to duplicate entries, manual reconciliations, and data discrepancies—undermining the ERP’s core goal of centralizing information.
Engaging key users in needs-assessment workshops builds buy-in and uncovers blockers before deployment, minimizing rework after go-live.
Absent Communication and Change Management
A single announcement about a “new tool” isn’t enough to rally the organization. Impacts on roles, responsibilities, and processes must be explained in a structured way.
Without an internal communication plan (targeted emails, intranet posts, newsletters, business champions), employees ignore the new solution’s benefits or mistrust the project’s true purpose.
Developing a change plan with a communication schedule and appropriate channels fosters trust. Feedback loops allow adjustments to the deployment and reduce resistance.
Thinking of the ERP as a Global Platform
Limiting the ERP to basic configuration without considering data, compliance, and the broader ecosystem encourages costly customizations and temporary fixes. An ERP is not an isolated module but the heart of a hybrid architecture.
Overemphasis on Standard Features
Selecting an ERP for its functional richness without assessing integration capability with business tools often decouples processes from the information system.
Companies taking this approach end up relying on manual entries and Excel exports to fill gaps, incurring extra license fees and re-entry labor.
A combined technical and business analysis conducted before solution selection identifies key processes to automate and integration needs, limiting overruns linked to custom development.
Uncontrolled Customizations
Customizing to match existing practices may seem appealing, but each change creates a unique maintenance path. Future updates become unknown variables that risk breaking custom code.
Projects that overindulge in customization must budget for testing and redevelopment at each ERP upgrade, significantly increasing total cost of ownership (TCO).
Adopting a modular extension strategy (microservices, open-source plugins) isolates business logic while keeping the ERP core upgradable without side-effects.
Neglecting Swiss Compliance Requirements
Swiss tax, social, and VAT rules evolve regularly, and some international ERP solutions don’t natively support these specifics. Emergency workarounds create ad hoc scripts and substitute tables.
These nonstandard adaptations break with every legislative change or ERP version update, requiring corrective development or production downtime for patches.
Integrating local regulatory constraints from the analysis phase—through ongoing legal and tax monitoring—enables selection of a compliant core or planning for complementary modules maintained by a stable open-source ecosystem.
Turn Your ERP Project into a Performance Lever
A successful ERP project relies less on software choice and more on solid scoping, integration anticipation, proactive change management, and tight governance. By defining a precise scope, mapping the IT ecosystem, supporting teams, and adopting a modular architecture compliant with Swiss regulations, companies control their budget and maximize ROI.
The Edana experts are ready to conduct the initial audit, design a precise functional specification, and implement governance tailored to your business challenges. With our contextual, open-source, and scalable approach, you can deploy a robust, flexible, and secure ERP—without financial surprises.
