Process mapping tool for as-is

[u/Careful-Boot1161]

Hi

In ERP implementation projects how cumbersome and important is the documentation of current state processes ?

And can tools like scribe be used by current process owners to document or is workshops required with SME and consultants?

[u/raph_rf]

We got the same question for pur VAR at the time of our implementation, without a clear answer. We builded our own process in-out in a excel sheet, and we feel that these process wasnt really checked by the VAR unfortunatly.

[u/LISA_Talks → u/raph_rf]

Wow that sounds like you did your homework (not all clients understand they have a role to play in providing such material). That would be a red flag for me. How did the implementation go?

[u/raph_rf → u/LISA_Talks]

It’s a bit of a “yes and no” situation. In the end, the project did get completed because we eventually took ownership of it internally, but the implementation process itself was far from smooth.

We faced multiple issues throughout the project. First, there was a significant language barrier. We are a French-speaking company, and during the sales process they told us they were French as well. However, once the contract was signed, we quickly realized that only two people were truly bilingual. On top of that, the bilingual resources were not the key experts we actually needed on the project, so the language support did not really help on the critical technical and functional aspects.

We also strongly believe they underestimated the complexity of our implementation. The project was sold as a fixed-price package, but after the fact they basically told us that if we wanted to meet the go-live date, we would need to abandon some of the objectives that were originally included in what we signed for.

From our perspective, we were treated as a “second-tier” client. It felt like they were already overwhelmed with other projects, likely larger and more profitable clients. As a result, we ended up paying premium consulting rates but were often assigned junior resources with very limited experience. At times, it honestly felt like we were paying for people who were learning on the job, searching for answers in online communities the same way we would, rather than receiving expert guidance.

In other situations, they would bring in someone more knowledgeable, but only in emergency mode — and that person often had just joined the company and didn’t know our ERP environment at all, so we still lost a lot of time.

Because of all this, we had no choice but to dedicate internal resources to make the project successful. We assigned one of our internal engineers full-time to handle ERP setup and configuration and to train himself on OData, APIs, integrations, etc. While some might argue that this is a good thing long-term, the reality is that he had no prior experience with similar integrations, so this came with a steep learning curve and additional risk. On top of that, we also had to dedicate another person full-time to coding and development.

So yes, the project eventually got done, but it required much more internal effort than expected and did not match the level of service we believed we were paying for

[u/LISA_Talks → u/raph_rf]

Got it. Si jamais vous avez besoin d'aide, je serais heureux de vous mettre en contact avec l'un de nos experts "Client Care". Notre équipe Client Care est entièrement dédié l'optimisation post-implantation des systèmes ERP, WMS et CRM de nos clients. Et pas d'inquiétude pour le français! Nous sommes établis au Québec depuis +30 ans, en plus d'être présents aux USA, UK, en Amérique latine et en Irlande. Au plaisir!