For a small manufacturer implementing its first ERP, it can be easy to think of implementation primarily in terms of the software: getting data into the system, configuring it, and training people to use it. But a lot of the work falls on the company itself, particularly the people who understand how the business runs across departments.

As Alex Beausoleil put it: “If there was a question, they all funneled to me… it felt like a training session every day.”

That experience is common during a first ERP implementation. One person often becomes the internal resource for questions from sales, purchasing, inventory, production, accounting, and management. They learn the system, help people work through new processes, and keep track of decisions as the company figures out how it wants to use the ERP.

The first ERP lesson: ownership cannot be outsourced

An ERP vendor can guide setup, train users, migrate data, and bring experience from other implementations. The company still needs someone internally who understands the business well enough to make decisions and get the right people involved.

This becomes particularly important when implementing an ERP for the first time. Companies moving from QuickBooks, spreadsheets, paper, or separate software tools may not have needed anyone to think about all of these processes together before.

A sales order creates demand for material and production. Purchasing decisions affect what production can build and when. Material issued to a work order affects inventory and job costs. What happens in production and shipping eventually needs to be reflected correctly in accounting.

The internal ERP owner doesn't need to do every job, but they need enough understanding of the company to recognize these connections and know who needs to be involved in a decision.

Tribal knowledge becomes visible fast

A first ERP implementation also tends to uncover just how much process knowledge lives with individual employees.

Who knows that a particular customer always needs additional paperwork? Who knows which material can be substituted during a shortage? Who knows that the lead time in the vendor record isn't the lead time you should plan around?

In a smaller company, there may have been little reason to formally document some of this. The person responsible knows what to do, and everyone knows to ask them.

An ERP implementation forces business maturation, more of those decisions need to be defined. Some can be handled through system configuration or data. Others belong in a documented procedure or employee training. In either case, the implementation team needs the experienced people who know why things are done a certain way.

This is also a good opportunity to question processes that have accumulated over time. If nobody can explain why an exception exists anymore, it may not need to follow you into the new ERP.

The project manager becomes a translator

The person managing the ERP project will spend a lot of time working between departments, representing both their unique needs and the system's design intent. The internal project manager needs to know how all the pieces fit together, both for their company and in the new system.

How do BOMs tie to production and demand signals for purchasing? How does a late PO impact the schedule and the end customer's promise date? When is inventory backflushed and when can accounting expect to see an Invoice, both in the AR Aging but also in the P&L?

For someone leading a first ERP implementation, part of the job is learning enough about each area to understand where they intersect. A decision made for one department may have consequences for another, and those connections aren't always obvious to a company that has been managing those processes in separate systems.

Survival Tips for Your First ERP Implementation

Choose an internal owner who has both the authority and the time to be involved. This is difficult to do as a side project, particularly once testing and training begin.

Document decisions as they're made. You'll have enough of them over the course of an implementation that relying on everyone's memory won't work.

Spend time early in the project scrubbing and preparing data. A clean example early in the project will go a long way to helping users contextualize with concrete data, moving abstract discussions into practical decisions that build confidence.

Train people on their responsibilities in the ERP, but give them some context for what happens before and after their part of the process. A buyer doesn't need to understand every accounting transaction, for example, but it helps to understand where the demand they're acting on came from.

And expect questions to be repeated. People are changing habits they've built over years, sometimes decades. Answering the same question again is part of getting everyone comfortable with a new system.

Over time, more people should be able to answer those questions themselves. You don't want the ERP to remain dependent on the one person who led the implementation.

Key takeaway

For a manufacturer adopting its first ERP, choosing and configuring the software is only part of the implementation. You also need someone inside the company who can learn the system, coordinate decisions across departments, and help build that knowledge internally.

That ownership is worth planning for before the implementation starts.