Signs Your ERP System Is Misaligned with Operations
Table of Contents Signs Your ERP System Is Misaligned with OperationsHow to Recognize When Your ERP No Longer Supports the...
ERP Recovery Consulting
A Troubled ERP Implementation Isn't a Dead End. It's a Starting Point.
Victoria Fide has no financial relationship with any ERP vendor or implementation partner. That independence is what makes it possible to tell you the truth about what's wrong — and do the work to fix it. In-flight or post-go-live.
Where to begin
Every engagement starts with a two-to-four-week assessment across six recovery domains
The team that conducts the assessment leads the recovery — no handoff
In-flight and post-go-live situations both have a clear path from here
Two Different Situations. The Same Underlying Problem.
Still in Execution
The timeline is slipping. Costs are climbing. The implementation partner is struggling to keep up, and leadership is losing confidence in the outcome. The project that was supposed to transform the business is consuming it instead.
Past Go-Live
The system is live. The implementation team is gone. But the reports aren't reliable, the workarounds are multiplying, and the efficiency gains the organization invested in haven't appeared. Go-live happened. Success didn't.
In both situations, the instinct is often to wait — to give the project more time, let the team find its footing, hope the post-go-live pain is temporary. Sometimes it is. More often, the issues that are visible today are symptoms of root causes that don't resolve on their own. The longer they go unaddressed, the more embedded they become — and the more expensive the week ahead is compared to the week before. If your implementation isn't delivering what it promised, the right time to address it is now.
Before the ERP Recovery Work Begins: An Honest Picture
ERP implementations fail in recognizable ways, and Victoria Fide's assessment is built around the six domains that account for most of them. Every recovery engagement begins there. The assessment doesn't produce a list of recommendations for someone else to act on. It produces a prioritized recovery roadmap, and the same team that conducts the assessment leads the work that follows.
Leadership
Is executive sponsorship genuine and visible? Are decisions being made by the right people, with the right information? Strong project leadership depends on clarity and commitment at the top.
Project Management
Is the project being run with the discipline it requires: scope, timeline, budget, and risk actively managed? Many troubled implementations aren't struggling because the work is hard. They're struggling because the management infrastructure isn't there.
Requirements
Do the documented requirements reflect what the business actually needs to operate effectively, or are they anchored to legacy behavior and resistance to process change?
Data Management
Is the data the system depends on clean, complete, and consistently structured? Data problems in recovery almost always trace back to migration decisions or validation gaps nobody addressed before go-live.
Testing
Has the system been tested against real business scenarios, actual transactions, actual edge cases, or against test cases that didn't reflect how the business operates?
Team Support and OCM
Are the people who have to work in this system prepared to use it effectively? Is there a plan to address the resistance that's already present, or prevent it from building further?
The assessment findings are delivered to all key stakeholders so everyone enters the recovery with a shared understanding of what the diagnostic found and what the path forward looks like.
The ERP Recovery Engagement: From Diagnosis to Resolution
The recovery roadmap produced by the assessment becomes the governing document for the engagement that follows. What that engagement covers depends on where the organization is.
For projects still in execution
Victoria Fide works from the client's side of the table to address the root causes the assessment identified: project management structure and governance, requirements correction, process redesign, implementation partner accountability, testing oversight, and go-live decision support. The goal is an implementation that delivers what the business needs, not just one that finishes.
For organizations past go-live
Recovery work focuses on the operational reset: realigning system configuration to actual workflows, stabilizing data and reporting, rebuilding adoption through targeted training and change management, clarifying process ownership, and measuring whether the benefits the implementation was supposed to deliver are actually materializing.
In both situations, the engagement extends through the Sustain stage. Go-live isn't the finish line. Sustained adoption and realized benefits are. Victoria Fide doesn't consider the work complete until they're in place.
Common Questions
ERP Recovery: Common Questions
Answers to what executive leaders ask most before engaging.
Will bringing in Victoria Fide create conflict with our existing implementation partner?
Not typically. Victoria Fide's role is to represent the client's interests, which often means working alongside the implementation partner, not against them. When the partner is capable and the project has structural or organizational issues driving the problems, having an independent advocate in the room improves outcomes for everyone. When the partner relationship itself is part of the problem, Victoria Fide will say so directly and help navigate what comes next.
We went live more than a year ago and we're still struggling. Is recovery still viable?
Yes. Post-go-live recovery work has no expiration date. The longer the gap between go-live and the current state, the more embedded the workarounds tend to be, but that's a scope consideration, not a reason to forgo the work. The question isn't how long it's been. It's whether the organization is ready to close the gap between what the system was supposed to deliver and what it's delivering today.
How long does an ERP recovery engagement take?
It depends on the severity and scope of what the assessment surfaces. For in-flight projects, the recovery engagement runs through the remainder of the implementation — the timeline is shaped by how much of the project remains and what needs to be addressed before go-live can happen responsibly. For post-go-live situations, the timeline depends on how embedded the operational gaps are and what it takes to close them. What doesn't vary is the starting point: every engagement begins with the assessment, which typically runs two to four weeks and produces a prioritized recovery roadmap with a clear picture of scope and effort before any additional commitment is made.
An Assessment That Tells You the Truth. An Engagement That Does the Work.
Most organizations that seek outside help with a troubled implementation get one of two things: a vendor or partner who has a financial interest in the outcome, or an independent assessment that stops at diagnosis without doing anything to close the gaps.
Victoria Fide has no financial relationship with any ERP vendor or implementation partner. That independence means Victoria Fide is equally willing to push back on the current implementation approach, restructure the scope, or recommend a different path as it is to confirm the current direction is sound.
The assessment isn't a handoff. The consultants who conduct it lead the recovery. The institutional knowledge built in the diagnostic phase carries through to every decision that follows.
What Clients Say
Victoria Fide is a unique organization that truly works for the benefit of their client. We brought them into our implementation project to help with an area we had identified as a high-risk area. It didn't take long for that area to become a low-risk area."
Ross Gilbertson
SVP IT, Northern Tool + Equipment
Backed by Our Client Success Guarantee
Every Victoria Fide recovery engagement is governed by our Client Success Guarantee. Success criteria are defined before work begins: specific, measurable outcomes the engagement is accountable for producing. We don't consider the work complete until they're met.
The Experience Behind the Work
Victoria Fide's advisory team is led by Tory Bjorklund, who has been involved in technology implementations since 1987 — across manufacturing, distribution, and enterprise-scale organizations — and Adele Graser, who has guided complex ERP and digital transformation initiatives since 2014. The methodology Victoria Fide brings to every engagement is built from that combined experience, not borrowed from a framework.
Every Week in the Current State Has a Cost.
Whether the project is still in motion or already live, the right time to address the gap is now. A recovery assessment is where that starts: an honest picture of what's driving the problem and a clear path to fixing it.
Where to go next
If your implementation is still in the planning phase, ERP Implementation Readiness addresses the preparation work that reduces recovery risk from the start.
Additional Resources
When an ERP Implementation Goes Off Track
Table of Contents When an ERP Implementation Goes Off TrackHow to Identify the Root Causes, Rebuild Confidence, and Get Your...
Why Digital Transformation Initiatives Fail After Go-Live
Table of Contents Why Go-Live Is Not the Finish LineMany organizations treat go-live as the final milestone in a digital...