The Biggest ERP Mistake Happens Before Procurement Even Begins

Talk to any municipal team about ERP, and the focus is almost always on the RFP.

What needs to go in it. How to structure it. How to evaluate vendors.

But in our experience, that’s not where things go wrong.

The biggest issues show up before procurement ever begins.

We see this all the time. A municipality knows their ERP needs to be replaced. Leadership agrees. There’s urgency. But when it comes time to move forward, the groundwork is not there.

The project team isn’t clearly defined. Governance is still unclear. Different departments have different expectations. And no one has a shared understanding of what the organization actually needs from a new system.

So procurement starts while those questions are still being figured out.

That’s when things begin to feel chaotic.

The municipalities that move through ERP procurement more smoothly tend to do a few things earlier.

They put a working team in place before anything starts. Not just for implementation, but for planning and procurement. They also establish a governance group that can make decisions and keep things moving. That alone removes a lot of friction.

They spend time understanding the market. ERP has changed significantly over the last decade, but many organizations are still working off outdated assumptions. Without that context, it’s easy to aim too high, aim too low, or spend time exploring options that were never realistic.

They also start talking about change early. ERP is not just a system replacement. It changes how people do their jobs. When staff hear about it for the first time during implementation, resistance is almost guaranteed. When they hear about it earlier, the transition is much smoother.

And they take a hard look at their current processes.

Every municipality has ways of working that have built up over time. Some are necessary. Others exist because they always have. ERP systems have a way of exposing that. If those conversations happen early, the organization goes into procurement with much more clarity. If they don’t, those same issues show up later, when they are harder to deal with.

Can you move forward without doing all of this upfront? Yes.

But what we see in those situations is that the work doesn’t go away. It just shows up later, often while procurement is already underway. That adds pressure, slows decisions, and makes the whole process feel heavier than it needs to be.

There are two things that consistently make the biggest difference early. A defined project team and a clear governance structure. Everything else can be built alongside if needed, but those two create the foundation.

ERP procurement isn’t just about choosing a system. It’s about preparing your organization to make that decision well.

The municipalities that invest a bit more time upfront don’t just run better procurements. They run better projects.