The Hardest Part of a $2M ERP Implementation

The hardest part of a $2M ERP implementation wasn't the data migration.

It wasn't the system configuration, the custom workflows, or the 3 a.m. go-live.

It was convincing people to stop using the folder on their desktop.

I've run this three times — moving teams from no system at all, from manual spreadsheets, and from an early 2000s legacy system nobody wanted to touch, to a modern cloud ERP. Every time, the technology was the easy part.

The resistance looks the same every time:

• "This is how we've always done it."
• "The old way worked fine."
• "I don't have time to learn this."

What actually worked: before we went live, I sat with each department head and asked them what they hated most about the current process. Then I showed them exactly how the new system fixed that one thing. Not a demo. Not a training session. One specific pain point, solved.

That's it. One win per person. The rest follows.

If you're planning a digital transformation and you're spending 90% of your energy on the technology — flip it.