Implementation projects are judged on the launch and lived with for years. The launch is the easy part. What determines whether the investment returns anything is what happens in the months after the consultants leave, when new people join, processes drift and the original champions move on.
The quiet return to the old way
It rarely announces itself. One person keeps a side spreadsheet because a report was missing. A second copies it because it is easier to ask them than to learn the system. Within a quarter the ERP holds the transactions and the spreadsheet holds the truth, and management is making decisions from the spreadsheet.
Training built around roles, not modules
A storekeeper does not need a tour of the accounting module; they need the four screens they will touch daily, on their own data, until it is automatic. Training organised by role is shorter, better attended and remembered. Training organised by software module is a demonstration that people sit through politely.
A real service level, not a promise to be responsive
Support is worth what it commits to: a channel that is monitored, a response time by severity, and a named escalation when it is missed. Without those it is a phone number that rings during working hours and a queue nobody can see. Agree the numbers before they are needed, because nobody negotiates fairly during an outage.
Health checks before the failure
Backups that have never been restored are not backups. Databases grow, integrations silently stop, disk fills, a scheduled job fails quietly for six weeks. A short scheduled review that checks those things, and reports in writing, costs a fraction of the incident it prevents.
Keep improving or the system ages badly
The business changes: a new branch, a new product line, a new regulation, a new report the board wants. A system that only receives fixes drifts further from the company every quarter. A quarterly review that turns accumulated complaints into a short list of changes is what keeps the two together.