Why TRC

Who should implement your ERP: a generalist, or a specialist who knows your business?

You’ve spent years refining how your business runs. We’ve spent 35 years doing the same with ours.

Your competitors may run similar systems, but they’re not you. The difference is your people, your processes, your years of experience and the path you’ve taken to get here. Most systems record transactions, and that’s probably what yours does today. We build the way you actually run your business into your system of record, so it becomes your company’s operating system, ready to scale. That’s the value we add, and it’s what we call a successful ERP rollout.

Since 1991, we’ve delivered hundreds of ERP implementations, as implementer and business consultant. We documented the decisions and reviewed the outcomes. That knowledge now shapes our whole approach, the questions our AI asks and the way our specialists work.

From business need to ERP decision. Which route fits your procurement process?

We ask the hard questions up front. You may not enjoy being challenged, but it’s the only way to capture your organization, your people and your processes properly. The alternative is a friendly yes, a signed agreement, and then reality.

1 The first conversation

• You show us how you work. You don’t have to describe it.
• We record it and play it back, one process at a time.
• You tell us what we’ve missed, and why it matters.
• We show you what we’d keep, and where we’ve seen a better way work.
• If we think you’re going the wrong way, we’ll say so, and explain why.
• The demo follows the list your team prepared.
• The depth of detail your people know never comes up.
• Assumptions are made, with no proof and nothing written down.
• A “yes” in a demo carries big consequences further down the line.

2 Buying

• In the paid TRC Explore Zone™, your people try the priority workflows.
• They use your own rules and data, not a demo.
• Before you sign, you see what works and what still needs work.
• You know exactly what the price covers.
• After six months, you can end the agreement under the agreed terms.*
• Everyone’s happy, and everyone thinks they’ve agreed.
• You think you have a price. The partner thinks it has a tidy project.
• The people who run the business day to day sat in and said little.
• This is the high point of the relationship. From here, it only goes one way.

3 Handover

• One written agreement says what data comes across.
• It says who cleans it, and who checks the figures match.
• Both teams can budget and plan the work.
• If the project lead changes, nothing is lost.
• The salesperson and the people who signed move on.
• The delivery team inherits promises it never made.
• Executive sponsors are called in: “Why are we being charged for this? We covered it in the demo.”
• The relationship starts to slide, and both sides argue over who pays.

4 Testing

• The person who showed us their work tests it.
• We play it back screen by screen as we build, not at the end.
• Paper and spreadsheets are built out along the way.
• Each workflow passes a quality gate, signed off by the person who uses it.
• If we miss a rule we agreed, we fix it. If you change a rule, you see the cost first.
• By testing, most of the contract value has already been invoiced and paid.
• It’s like being handed the keys to a finished house: the foundations are in and the rooms are done.
• Then the detail that was never captured surfaces: incomplete processes, missing workflows, parts of the business not covered.
• “This isn’t what you showed us. This isn’t our business.”
• More change requests, or go live with less than you had before.

5 Go-live and beyond

• Your business operating system is built into one system.
• Your people make decisions and serve customers, instead of juggling systems.
• Your customers get a better, more consistent experience.
• You run more efficiently, with less admin and fewer errors.
• Staff morale drops: “This is worse than what we had for 15 years.”
• “We were promised the moon. This is what we got.”
• Project sponsors are hauled over the coals, and in larger organizations, some are let go.
• New people come in to fix it and rerun the project, on a live system.
• The project ends up costing several times the original price.

Why it matters

Don’t take our word for it.

80% In Kearney’s sample of more than 60 ERP transformation programs, 80% ran at least 200% over budget and missed their planned completion dates. Kearney, 2023

That isn’t because the tools are bad, the partners lack experience or the customer lacks vision. It comes down to how the project is run, and how the roles and requirements are defined and captured.

See it working. Then sign.

If we think another specialist would serve you better, we’ll tell you up front.

Talk to Brad, our AI advisor. Tell him about one rule your experienced people know by heart, and he’ll build it into your CORE report.

See the TRC Explore Zone™

*Terms and conditions apply.

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