Why You Shouldn’t Let Your ERP Vendor Dictate the Timeline
And how to set realistic timelines...
ERP vendors are good at two things: selling you software, and selling you speed. The faster they can get you to sign, the faster they can point to another successful go-live. But when timelines are dictated by vendors, or worse, by arbitrary business milestones, you’re left carrying the cost of a rushed implementation.
We’ve seen it play out too many times. A warehouse contract expiring, a financial year-end looming, or a vendor promising they can “get you live in 90 days.” And because everyone is eager to get moving, the business agrees. What gets overlooked is whether the business is actually ready. Ready doesn’t mean the software has been purchased or the statement of work has been signed. Ready means stakeholders are aligned, teams have capacity, and processes are mapped. Without those foundations, a short timeline becomes a pressure cooker.
The vendor’s definition of success
For vendors, success is simple: were you live on the date they promised? That’s the metric they care about, not whether the system is properly embedded, not whether your teams know how to use it, and not whether the processes inside it are the right ones for the future of your business.
It’s why you’ll find vendors training your team on how to click buttons, but not on why those buttons matter. They’ll mirror your old processes into the new ERP with little challenge, because changing processes takes time. They’ll hit the deadline, but you’ll be left wondering why everything feels just as clunky as before, only now it’s cost you six figures and burned through the goodwill of your team.
What rushing looks like on the ground
When timelines are dictated externally, the symptoms are easy to spot:
Teams are brought in too late, sometimes only a few weeks before go-live.
Decision-making bottlenecks form because the right people weren’t involved from the start.
Stakeholders push back, saying “we don’t have capacity for this.” And they’re right, because no one planned for it.
Corners get cut. Integrations are deferred, processes are half-baked, documentation is non-existent.
On paper, the project hits its deadline. In reality, the system limps across the finish line with frustrated users and a long tail of “fixes” that should have been designed in from day one.
What a realistic timeline requires
It’s not that fast timelines are impossible. They can be done. But only if the business has done the work to be genuinely ready:
Stakeholder alignment. Every function that will touch the ERP needs to know why it’s happening, what’s changing, and how they’ll be involved.
A strong internal sponsor. Someone with both the authority and the time to pull the right people into the room. Too junior, and they’ll be ignored. Too senior, and they won’t have time.
Documented processes. Not just “how things work today,” but how they should work tomorrow. Otherwise the ERP just replicates your inefficiencies.
Extra capacity. Freeing up people’s workloads, or bringing in temporary support, so the team isn’t trying to squeeze an ERP project into evenings and weekends.
Trusted partners. Middleware and integration specialists who understand your business, not just the software. Because your ERP doesn’t exist in isolation.
If those pieces are missing, the vendor’s short timeline is a trap. You’ll deliver something, but it won’t be what the business needs.
Set your own pace
The mistake isn’t wanting speed, it’s letting someone else define what speed means. The right question isn’t “can we go live in 90 days?” It’s “what needs to be true for us to go live in 90 days?” That flips the responsibility back where it belongs: onto readiness, not rhetoric.
If a vendor insists on their timeline, don’t push back with “that’s too fast.” Push back with the conditions that make it possible: stakeholder buy-in, a dedicated sponsor, capacity, integration partners. If those conditions aren’t met, the answer isn’t to cross your fingers and hope. The answer is to move the date.
Because missing a vendor’s deadline is frustrating. But missing your own readiness is catastrophic.
Final thought
Every ERP project comes down to a trade-off between speed, cost, and quality. Vendors will happily sell you on speed. Your job is to protect quality, because that’s what makes the cost worthwhile. And that means taking ownership of the timeline. Set it yourself. Build it around your reality, not theirs. That’s how you get an ERP that works for your business, not just for a vendor’s case study.