Why ERP Implementations Fail (And What You Can Do About It) with Jim Leone, Ep #43

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ERP implementations are among the most complex, expensive, and high-stakes projects a company can undertake. Yet time and again, organizations invest millions of dollars without investing in the right things and the consequences don’t show up until after go-live. The warning signs are almost always there from the start, and the reasons for failure are often not what you would expect.

In this episode, Jim Leone joins us to break down exactly why ERP implementations fail and what leaders can do to prevent it. Drawing on over 20 years of experience across the Department of Defense, chemical, and life sciences industries, Jim shares the hard-won lessons behind executive sponsorship, testing culture, managing resistors, and what happens when companies try to do too much with too little budget.

I have seen entire implementation teams leave because the go-live was underfunded. – Jim Leone

 

You’ll want to hear this episode if you are interested in…

0:01:41 — From Defense Systems to ERP: Jim shares how his first job working on Department of Defense systems, where failure was simply not an option, shaped his entire approach to ERP implementation testing.

0:03:13 — The Most Common Reasons Implementations Fail: Jim walks through the list: lack of visible executive sponsorship, inadequate training, and poor testing discipline– and why body language in a testing meeting tells you everything.

0:05:40 — Pulling Your Best People and Backfilling the Gaps: Why you must dedicate your subject matter experts fully to the project, and how to bring in outside contractors to backfill finance and IT roles so the business keeps running.

0:07:46 — Spotting and Managing Resistors: How to identify resistors at the kickoff session, why telling people what’s in it for them is your best tool, and what to do when someone just won’t come around.

0:12:46 — What Underfunding Really Costs You: Jim explains why treating an ERP as a low-cost initiative is a guarantee of failure.  He tells the story of an entire implementation team that walked out the door three months after go-live.

0:17:37 — The Conversation Nobody Has Before a Project Kicks Off: Why first-time leaders need an advisor or coach to help them understand what’s normal, what’s not, and how to stay the course when an implementation feels like a pressure cooker.

0:19:39 — What Jim Wishes He Had Known: If you have executive sponsorship, training, testing, the right people, money, and a realistic timeline, everything is going to be okay. You may not get them all, but you need the majority.


About Jim Leone

Jim Leone is a senior enterprise leader with over 20 years of experience leading ERP implementations, finance transformations, and dashboard and reporting initiatives across the Department of Defense, chemical, and life sciences industries. Known for bridging the gap between Finance, Accounting, and IT, Jim has led major SAP implementations at Fortune 500 companies and is recognized for building the people, processes, and systems that make complex transformations succeed.


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