D365 Project Under Stress

A D365 Project under stress provides warning signs, experienced ERP consultancies will quickly spot these indicators and know what remedial action needs be taken to bring a project back into line. For users it may be less obvious until the finance department note the delta occurring between the D365 budget and the actual spend your ERP project is incurring.

Prompt remedial action will help resolve the situation but those red flags can present a challenge to spot if you don’t know what to look for. With ERP replacement cycles typically once a decade, its not surprising to find a lack of experience within an organisation, after all your business is not software implementation – ours however is.

A D365 project under stress will see rapidly increasing costs, one example we observed when engaged as a third party assurance team on a large programme of change, was a significant turnover in consultants.

The client had deemed it an irritation to begin with but as meetings started to get repeated, with different people taking a different approach, resultant rework, even the cost of onboarding new starters (vetting costs were significant and slow), we prompted a more detailed analysis that revealed consultancy costs had risen by 50%+ against the original budget.

The programme was not been helped by an insistent implementation partner sticking to an agile implementation plan, agile project planning has its place but one downside we have frequently encountered is that you rarely get a baseline project plan against which to measure performance and cost.

Costs can build up rapidly but can take time to reveal themselves particularly in the absence of a more structured type of planning approach, it’s also rarely in the interests of the primary ERP solution provider to point out rising cost as they are generally the beneficiary of them. It’s here where experienced eyes can quickly hit the ground running, prompting remedial action where needed and insisting on a more structured approach to planning that ultimately benefits the user.

Low Cost Assurance

Where clients see a project going off course they can take matters into their own hands, contracting directly with third parties such as AX Software to either manage the project, provide resource or advise on remedial actions.

Even in it’s most abbreviated form providing a health check it demonstrates due diligence and not just the assurances of your principal implementation provider. On a scale of D365 implementation costs it would rank quite lowly with the best result been a third party confirmation that the health of the project can be flagged as green.

You Have Choice

The beauty of Dynamics 365 is that there is choice in the market, if someone or some company is not performing you can take control and bring in the appropriate resource to rectify the situation and continue your project.

Blended D365 Projects are becoming more common place particularly in areas where resources have historically been thin on the ground, manufacturing, human resources, project costing and BI been squeeze points for many implementations.

Call or email us to see what we might be able to do for you.