3 Signs Your ERP Failure Is Fixable
If you’re facing a dwindling ERP budget and mounting expectations from your boardroom, it’s time for a reevaluation of your ERP investment. Many so-called ERP "failures" stem from issues with business alignment rather than software flaws, which often manifest as poor data quality, low team adoption rates, and an intangible ROI. The upside is that those problems are fixable, and often without scrapping what you’ve already bought. In this article, we’ll look at three unmistakable signs that an ERP failure doesn’t have to be permanent.
Even some of the industry's most prominent businesses, with their deep pockets and experienced teams, as you’ll find out, have met setbacks. However, those stumbles were only the beginning of new learnings. We’ll illustrate how DCG’s SPEAR framework can turn what seems like an ERP breakdown into an opportunity for growth.
If you find yourself asking these alarming questions about ERP workability, here’s how SPEAR was designed to turn things around, and why they’re fixable.
Sign 1: “Why does our ERP seem to work fine inside each department, but everything breaks down when data has to flow across teams?”
Signal to monitor: If each department can “make it work” independently, but cross-functional flows break down, you're likely to deal with a solvable alignment issue.
Here’s an example.
A Case of Business Process Misalignment — Nestlé
What happened: Nestlé’s ERP implementation spun out of control when standardized templates clashed with entrenched departmental processes, leading to customizations that mirrored existing workflows. This caused data inconsistencies, complicated support, escalating costs, and a lack of cross-departmental value.
Why it’s fixable: When a system “fails” only at handoffs, the root isn’t technology. It’s a process design and governance issue from the start. According to BCG, over-customizing ERP to replicate legacy processes slows transformation, increases cost, and creates long-term technical debt. The solution is standardization with accountability and not another module patch-up.
How SPEAR turns it around:
SPEAR stands for Surveillance → Performance → Excellence → Automation → Requirements & Roadmap (A data-backed stage-by-stage framework designed by experts to address the evolution of your ERP journey from conception to global scalability)
- Surveillance → Performance
Begin by making the current operating picture clear by identifying where processes diverge, where data is reshaped, and who owns each step. From there, show shared KPIs that every department commits to tracking and closing, ensuring alignment across the organization.
- → Excellence
Cut back customizations to only what truly differentiates your business. Document the standard processes, assign clear ownership, and create a repeatable way of working that everyone can follow.
Outcome to aim for: As Nestlé learned, once alignment and process mapping are established, teams can use the system as intended. Data becomes consistent, complexity eases, and efficiency gains finally show up in the numbers.
Sign 2: “If the system is supposed to work, why do my teams keep going back to spreadsheets instead of using it?”
Signal to monitor: If your teams avoid the system but can clearly explain the friction, you’re close to a solution.
Let’s take a look at another example.
A Case of User Adoption Resistance — Lidl
What happened: Lidl spent years and hundreds of millions only to find staff reverting to spreadsheets. The culprit wasn’t core technology as they first believed. It was weak ownership, minimal involvement in workflow design, and training that didn’t stick. Adoption collapsed, and the program wore the blame.
Why it’s fixable: User resistance is rational when systems don’t align with actual workflows, or when users don’t have a say in the design. According to McKinsey, low employee engagement and inadequate leadership support are responsible for 70% of transformation initiatives failing. Change management must be closely intertwined with a resilient design discipline, nurturing organizational culture.
How SPEAR turns it around:
- Surveillance → Performance
Track adoption with metrics that matter, like task completion time, error rates, and rework. Use short, iterative cycles to improve the experience, making wins visible and building momentum over time.
- → Excellence
Work with end users to design standardized workflows that accurately reflect their work processes. Align roles, permissions, and transfers to those workflows, and appoint leaders within the teams who can influence adoption and drive consistency.
Outcome to aim for: When Lidl focused on involvement, clarity, and iterative training —precisely what the SPEAR lens recommends for DCG’s clients — user adoption rose, and efficiency followed. The lesson is that if employees can describe what they wish the system did, you don’t have a platform problem, but rather a miscommunication that you can readily fix.
Sign 3: “If we’ve already spent millions on this ERP, why aren’t we seeing the return in efficiency or business outcomes?”
Signal to monitor: If 60–70% of what you’ve paid for sits dormant, a roadmap is likely to be your fastest path to ROI, and not a redesign or platform switch.
A Case of Investment & Integration Pitfalls — HP
What happened: HP’s rushed migration triggered a significant cost and technical backlog because only a fraction of the functionality went live, and critical integrations stalled. The foundation existed, but the plan didn’t work.
Why it’s fixable: According to Gartner, up to 75% of ERP implementations fail not from the absence of capability, but often due to gaps in integration planning, poor sequencing, and failure to activate key business capabilities at go-live. And it’s fixable.
How SPEAR turns it around:
- → Requirements & Roadmap
Create a structured, prioritized plan that delivers value through a phased approach, responding to current business needs and stakeholder expectations. Sequence integrations in the correct order, with defined exit criteria and clear test plans to ensure each stage is successful before moving forward.
- → Performance
Tie every phase of implementation to measurable KPIs that track both business impact and user experience. Pilot each stage, learn from the results, then scale with confidence. Pilot → learn → scale. That’s one way to gain buy-in.
Outcome to aim for: HP regained traction by removing integration blockers and sequencing go-lives. In practice, this involves shrinking the blast radius of a miscalculated ERP deployment, proving value quickly, and then expanding the footprint.
Download The Silent Drift: When ERP Doesn’t Deliver for Your Teams —An expert-led guide for spotting where things went sideways, how to pull them back, and protect your investment.
Why SPEAR Was Built For Rescues (without the heroics)
SPEAR is more than a winning rescue strategy, but also a way to keep businesses in charge while technology catches up:
- Surveillance → See what’s happening in your processes and data live, not what was drawn in phase zero.
- Performance → Establish metrics people believe in, share them transparently and use them to close gaps.
- Excellence → Treat workflows like products, documented, owned, and continuously enhanced.
- Automation → Only after the rules are clear and measured, automate what is stable and valuable.
- Requirements & Roadmap → Sequence work by business value, with staged delivery and traceable decisions.
The point isn’t perfection, but to deliver momentum with control and clarity about what you set out to achieve for your teams. CFOs stay in the driver’s seat, budgets are tied to measurable outcomes, and “failure” becomes a set of solvable conditions.
Bridge the Gap from Recovery to Results
Across Nestlé, Lidl, and HP, the pattern is consistent, i.e., the technology had potential, but the program lacked structure. When you see cross-functional breakdowns, user workarounds, and unused capabilities, you’re looking at a system ready to be rescued only if you realign processes, involve people meaningfully, and deliver value in planned phases.
If your ERP isn't doing the job, it’s not your fault, and you don’t need to tear down what you’ve already built. You will, though, benefit from visibility into your processes, ownership of your data, and a roadmap your teams can believe in.
If you seek a structured path to recovery that protects your investment so far and restores confidence in your plan, let’s map your ERP journey to the results that matter.
Contact our SPEAR ERP rescue team to receive your personalized transformation strategy.
