Services

ERP & Business Systems

ERP programmes fail in predictable ways, and almost never for technical reasons. They fail because the process was never agreed before the software was configured, because the data going in was worse than anyone admitted, or because nobody owned the system after go-live.

The situation

What we usually find

For businesses running finance and operations on systems that no longer talk to each other — or on one system nobody uses past the basics.

The tell is month-end. If closing the books means exporting from two systems, reconciling them in a spreadsheet and asking someone to confirm the stock figure by hand, the problem is not the closing process. It is that no single record of the business exists, so every question has to be answered by assembling one.

That has become more expensive to live with. Electronic tax invoicing is now mandatory for VAT-registered businesses, withholding agents and anyone turning over more than five million shillings, and since January 2026 the Revenue Authority validates the income and expenses declared in a return against its own eTIMS records. An expense with no matching electronic invoice is disallowed and becomes taxable income. A business whose purchase records live partly in a system and partly in a drawer is carrying a tax exposure, not just an administrative irritation.

An ERP is how a business stops keeping several versions of itself. That is worth saying plainly, because it is also the hard part — the software is the smaller half of the work, and any firm that tells you otherwise is selling the licence.

What changes

From where you are, to where this gets you

Most organisations arrive at this practice from a recognisable place. This is the distance it covers.

What this practice changes. Month-end assembled by hand from several systems becomes: Reporting that runs from one set of numbers. Stock figures nobody entirely trusts becomes: One inventory position, visible to everyone. The same data keyed into three different places becomes: Entered once, posted everywhere it belongs. An ERP nobody uses past the basics becomes: The system finally earning what you paid for it.

  1. Month-end assembled by hand from several systems

    Reporting that runs from one set of numbers

  2. Stock figures nobody entirely trusts

    One inventory position, visible to everyone

  3. The same data keyed into three different places

    Entered once, posted everywhere it belongs

  4. An ERP nobody uses past the basics

    The system finally earning what you paid for it

What this practice covers

The work itself

Engagements draw on whichever of these the situation needs. Very few use all of them, and we will say which we think apply before you commit to anything.

Deciding what you need

Independent work on requirements and fit before anything is bought, including the honest question of whether the system you already own can be made to do the job.

  • ERP advisory
  • ERP selection
  • Sage 200
  • Sage Business Cloud

Getting it in

Configuration, data and integration — the phase where programmes are won or lost, and where the data work is always larger than the plan assumed.

  • ERP implementation
  • ERP migration
  • Data migration
  • ERP customisation
  • ERP integration

What it runs

The operational areas an ERP is expected to carry, on one ledger, so a sale, a stock movement and a posting are the same event rather than three.

  • Financial management systems
  • Inventory and procurement systems
  • Manufacturing systems
  • Payroll and HR integration

Getting value out

Most businesses use a fraction of what they have already paid for. This is the work of closing that gap without buying anything further.

  • ERP reporting
  • Business intelligence
  • ERP optimisation

Keeping it running

Support and ongoing management after go-live, which is when statutory changes arrive and when most implementations quietly begin to decay.

  • ERP support
  • Managed ERP services

How it runs

What happens if you call us

Every engagement has a decision point at the end of each stage. You can stop at any one of them, and what you have paid for up to that point is yours to take elsewhere.

  1. 01

    Map how the business runs now

    Before any software is discussed: how an order becomes an invoice, where the same figure is entered twice, what has to be true for month-end to close, and which spreadsheets are load-bearing.

  2. 02

    Establish requirements, then fit

    A written requirements document you could put to any supplier — including ones that are not us. Only then the question of whether the current system can be made to work, and only after that the question of replacing it.

  3. 03

    Configure, migrate and prove

    Configuration against the agreed process, then the data. We run a period in parallel and reconcile it against the existing system, so the numbers are proven before the business depends on them.

  4. 04

    Go live, then stay through a close

    Cutover, then support through the first month-end — the point at which every gap that survived testing makes itself known. Handover happens after that close, not before it.

What you get

The things you keep

Advisory work is easy to buy and hard to hold on to. These are the artefacts that remain with you afterwards, and they belong to you whether or not the engagement continues.

  • A process map of how the business actually runs, agreed by the people who run it
  • A written requirements document you could put to any supplier, not only to us
  • A data migration plan naming what comes across, what is archived and what is abandoned
  • A configured system with a parallel period reconciled line by line before cutover
  • Written procedures for the people who will use it, and a named support route after go-live

Where this is not the answer

We will tell you when you do not need a new ERP. A good share of what presents as a system problem is a process problem wearing a system’s clothes, and replacing the software carries it across intact — at considerable cost, and with the added disadvantage that everyone now blames the new system.

Discuss Your ERP Requirements

Tell us what you are trying to improve and we will tell you, plainly, whether we are the right people for it.

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