ERP Implementation Readiness Scan
Before you select, implement, upgrade, or re-implement an ERP: find out whether the organization is ready, not just the software. Twenty questions across the five areas a doctoral study of U.S. manufacturing SMEs found decide ERP outcomes. Get a readiness score, a resistance-to-buy-in read, the blockers that sink go-lives, and a one-page brief for your sponsor, your vendor, or your board.
The five areas are the five themes from the founder's 2022 doctoral study of ERP implementation strategies in small and mid-sized manufacturers (Walden University). The questions and scoring are BBI's own.
Your project
One ERP project per scan: a selection, an implementation, an upgrade, or a re-implementation.ERP Readiness Brief
This is the page you hand to the sponsor, the vendor, or the board. It is built from your answers above and updates as you change them. Copy it as formatted text or as Markdown.
Email me this brief
Your score and brief are already on this page. If you want a copy in your inbox plus one short note per GROUND stage over the next six weeks, leave an email. One list, unsubscribe any time, no sales sequence.
Want the score checked by someone who has run this inside a plant?
The scan is a self-assessment. BBI's ERP readiness review is the verified version: a fixed-scope look at your process decisions, data ownership, change plan, and cutover criteria, with a remediation plan in GROUND order. Fixed fee, no open-ended consulting bill.
Running the project already? The free ERP Toolkit has the Cutover Tie-Out Workbook, the Buy-In Resistance Map, and the Shadow Spreadsheet Census. If the data is the worry, run the Six ERP Failure Modes Self-Scan.
Questions people ask before they get here
Why do ERP implementations fail in small and mid-sized manufacturers?
In the founder's 2022 doctoral study of ERP implementation strategies at U.S. manufacturing SMEs, the strategies that worked clustered into five themes: company culture and business process strategy, diffusion of innovation and digital transformation strategies, planning, managing, and leading strategies, change management strategies, and methods of implementation and lessons learned. The study's primary recommendation was that leaders identify the causes of resistance to organization-wide buy-in. Projects fail where one of those five is missing, and resistance that nobody named is the most common missing piece. This scan scores all five.
How do I get buy-in for a new ERP system?
Name the resistance before the kickoff. Ask each department what the new system will take from them (a spreadsheet they control, a workaround they rely on, a report only they can run) and write it down. Then make the change trialable and observable: a pilot the skeptics can watch, with a result they can see. The Change area of this scan asks exactly those questions and the brief records the answers.
What should we do before selecting an ERP?
Decide your business processes first, then shop for software that fits them, not the other way around. Know who owns each master data set that will migrate, which spreadsheets are acting as systems of record today, and the one number that will prove go-live worked. If any of those is unknown, the vendor demo is premature. The scan's hard blockers are these questions.
What is an ERP readiness assessment?
A structured check of whether the organization, not the software, is ready: process decisions made, an executive sponsor who will invoke the need for change, a change management plan, data ownership for migration, acceptance criteria for go-live, and a plan for the first ninety days after. This free scan is the self-assessment version; BBI's paid review is the verified version.
Should we re-implement or upgrade our existing ERP?
Run the scan on the current state. If process and data areas score low, an upgrade carries the same mess onto a newer version. If leadership and change areas score low, a re-implementation will meet the same resistance the first one did. The scan tells you which problem you actually have before you spend on either.
Does BBI see my answers?
No. The scan runs in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere unless you copy the brief or ask for it by email.