Construcciones Yamaro: Five questions to answer before signing an ERP contract
The right enterprise resource planning (ERP) system can help construction contractors scale, but only if the business is ready to change how work gets done.
By Alex Boury, general manager of Access Construction.
Australia’s construction contractors are under pressure to do more with less. Margins are tight, the labour gap is biting and regulations keep on expanding. Some contractors are finding their old systems – a disconnected tech stack that’s looking wobbly or a legacy ERP with spreadsheets filling the gaps – can’t keep pace.
For contractors serious about scaling, a purpose-built construction ERP has become the obvious next step: a single platform connecting financials, projects, procurement, plant and payroll, with real-time visibility over cost, cash and compliance. Done well, it’s the difference between doubling your project portfolio and doubling your administration overhead.
But doing it well is the hard part. Gartner’s 2024 report, What IT Leaders Must Do to Avoid Disappointing ERP Initiatives, predicts that by 2027, more than 70 per cent of recently implemented ERP initiatives will fail to fully meet their business-case goals. In construction – where project-based cost control, subcontractor networks and field-to-finance data flows all collide – that failure rate can run even higher.
The uncomfortable truth is that the software itself is rarely the problem. Across the dozens of successful construction ERP implementations our team has delivered, the single biggest determinant of long-term value is how prepared the business is on the day the contract is signed.
If you’re approaching an ERP decision, these are the five questions to answer honestly with your leadership team before you commit.
1. Are we prepared to change how we work or just digitise what we already do?
The contractors who get the most from ERP are the ones who treat the implementation process as a business design exercise, not just a software configuration project. Digitising broken processes locks them in. If your team’s instinct is “We just need the system to mirror our spreadsheets”, you’re not ready.
2. Who owns our data and is it clean enough to migrate?
Messy master data is the silent killer of ERP timelines. Suppliers, cost codes, plant records, contract history – every domain needs a named owner, a written standard and a cleansing program underway before discovery begins. If data is still being tidied when configuration starts, the project is already behind.
3. Is our executive sponsor actively engaged or just a signature?
Sponsorship is an active role. Good executive sponsors unblock decisions, fund capacity and model the behaviours that drive adoption. A name on a steering committee isn’t sponsorship. The 12th Edition of Prosci’s Best Practices in Change Management report shows projects with visibly engaged sponsors are nearly three times more likely to meet their objectives. Ask honestly whether your sponsor has the time, authority and appetite to lead from the front.
4. Have we protected our A-team’s time?
ERP implementation is a cross-functional exercise that needs your best people from commercial, projects, finance, payroll, procurement and field operations. The implementations that fail most predictably are the ones where those people are still expected to deliver their day jobs at full capacity. If you can’t free up at least 30 per cent of their time and backfill the rest, the project will stall.
5. Have we mapped the “Grey IT” we actually run on?
Every construction business runs on undocumented workflows – email approvals, chat threads, personal supplier lists, off-system cost tracking. If you only model the official process during discovery, users will quietly route around the new system within weeks of go-live. Surface these workflows early or accept that they’ll resurface later.
None of these questions are about the software. They’re about whether your business is ready to make the most of it. The contractors who answer them honestly – and act on the gaps – are the ones who succeed.
Read Access Construction’s guide, What Your Construction ERP Vendor Won’t Tell You, for a practical implementation framework covering discovery, governance, data, change management and training.
The post Five questions to answer before signing an ERP contract appeared first on Inside Construction.
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