How to Use—and What to Expect From—Consulting and Talent Solutions for ERP Projects

Article

By Angela Lurie, Executive Director, Robert Half Management Resources, and Ryan M. Sutton, Executive Director, Technology, Robert Half

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) initiatives are among the most consequential investments your business can make—transformational in scope but demanding in execution. These projects can touch every facet of your organization, from finance and operations to IT and human resources, requiring not just technological change, but also fundamental shifts in how work gets done.

The complexity, duration and scale of ERP projects can stretch your internal teams, divert key personnel from their day-to-day responsibilities and expose gaps in project-specific expertise. That’s why even the most well-resourced companies can struggle to manage this type of initiative in-house. It’s also why many businesses rely on a blend of consulting services and flexible talent solutions to help them achieve on-time delivery—and long-term business value—from their ERP program.

Whether your business is in the early stages of planning an ERP project, navigating implementation or managing the ripple effects of the post-go-live phase, the right external support model can help you accelerate progress and reduce risk while freeing up internal teams to focus on areas where they can add the most value. This article provides an overview of three key models and examines four areas where outside consulting and talent solutions can help drive ERP project success. First, we’ll cover two related activities critical to ERP success: business process assessment and improvement.

Consulting and Talent Solutions for ERP Implementation Optimizing your ERP investment through business process improvement 3 flexible engagement models to consider for your ERP project 1. Maintaining business as usual 2. Project support 3. Cutover preparation 4. Post-implementation support Advance your ERP journey with support from Robert Half and Protiviti

Optimizing your ERP investment through business process improvement

A successful ERP transformation begins with a deep examination of your business processes to identify inefficiencies, redundancies, control gaps and outdated workflows. You should evaluate how current processes align with industry best practices and determine where modernization or standardization is needed most.

Through a business process assessment, you can map how work gets done today, evaluate the maturity of key processes and surface areas that require change. This is also the phase where outside consultants can add early value to an ERP project by bringing in structured methodologies, diagnostic tools and industry benchmarks. They can provide insights your internal teams may not have the bandwidth or expertise to uncover on their own.

Once your assessment of current-state processes is complete, you can focus on business process improvement, which includes redesigning processes, aligning future-state workflows with ERP capabilities, and defining new roles, responsibilities and controls.

Conducting business process assessment and improvement work upfront can help inform:

ERP solution selection and fit-gap analysis

Scope definition for the ERP implementation

Change management strategies

Training and adoption priorities

Long-term automation and reporting goals

An early process assessment also helps ensure your new ERP system doesn’t simply replicate inefficient legacy workflows, but enables real transformation aligned with your business priorities.

One structured approach many organizations use to guide their business process assessment and improvement efforts is a capability maturity model. You can use this framework to evaluate the current state of processes across functions like finance, supply chain, procurement and human resources, and then benchmark those capabilities on a maturity scale. Are processes ad hoc and manual? Are they repeatable and optimized?

Answering these questions can help define your organization’s readiness for ERP transformation. They can also inform the development of your target operating model, or your vision for how your people, systems and processes should function after the system implementation.

Now, let’s talk about different ways to execute your ERP initiative and achieve your desired future state.

3 flexible engagement models to consider for your ERP project

Every ERP project is different, but what they all share is a need for specialized expertise and sufficient capacity at critical moments. Whether you need high-level guidance, targeted delivery support or simply more hands on deck, flexible engagement models allow you to scale your capabilities without overcommitting internal teams or compromising momentum.

Three common approaches include:

Advisory services, which provide strategic guidance to help you shape your ERP road map, define governance structures and align with best practices. You maintain ownership of execution while experienced advisers provide insight to help you steer clear of common pitfalls.

Workstream delivery, which involves assigning outside consultants to own specific components of your project—such as testing, data migration, process redesign or change management. This approach reduces execution risk and helps ensure critical deliverables are managed by those with deep experience.

Resource augmentation, which delivers skilled professionals—either on a contract or permanent basis—to support the ERP team or staff critical roles elsewhere in your organization. It’s a flexible and cost-effective way to increase capacity.

Each model helps you maintain control while accelerating delivery, improving outcomes and keeping your business running smoothly.

1. Maintaining business as usual

One of the first challenges companies encounter during an ERP project is maintaining daily operations. This is a support area companies often overlook at the outset, but it’s critical to plan for from the beginning. Without adequate support, day-to-day operations may slow, errors can increase, and employee burnout becomes a real risk.

By bringing in contract talent to keep core functions running smoothly, you give your internal teams the time and space to concentrate on the ERP rollout—without compromising the performance of the business itself. For example, you may need to tap additional support for:

General accounting and financial reporting and analysis—Interim accounting and finance professionals can handle monthly close processes, journal entries, accounts receivable/payable (AR/AP), and financial reporting duties. They can also produce management reports and analyses to keep leadership informed.

System and network administration—External system administrators or engineers can monitor performance, run backups, address user issues and keep legacy platforms stable until the new ERP solution is live. This prevents any degradation in service that could occur if your IT team is preoccupied with ERP configuration and testing.

Stakeholder communications and reporting—Consultants or project management office (PMO) staff working on a contract basis can prepare regular project status updates for executives and stakeholders, and even liaise with third parties like auditors, customers or vendors on matters related to ongoing operations.

General staffing of essential roles—Any role left understaffed temporarily due to ERP project assignments can be handled by a skilled contract talent. Whether it’s a financial analyst, an inventory manager or a customer service lead, augmenting your team with interim talent helps prevent your ERP initiative from diluting the strength of critical functions.

By using external resources to help maintain business-as-usual performance during ERP implementation, you can keep daily productivity and service levels up. You can also reduce the risk of employee burnout.

2. Project support

ERP implementations have many moving parts. Beyond maintaining daily business and preparing for cutover, there is a diverse range of actual project work to accomplish. Here is where consulting and talent solutions shine, by augmenting your project team with specialized support in all the areas required to design, build and deploy your ERP system. Project support can include:

Business analysis and requirements gathering—ERP business analysts can facilitate workshops, document current and future-state processes, translate business requirements into technical specifications, and help ensure that the new solution will support operational goals.

Organizational change enablement—Change management consultants can help prepare your workforce for what’s ahead by developing communication plans, managing stakeholder engagement and designing programs that promote readiness and buy-in ahead of go-live.

Process design, testing and documentation—Functional consultants and quality assurance (QA) professionals can work closely with your in-house teams to map workflows, develop test scripts, manage defect resolution and embed best practices that drive operational excellence.

Systems integration and technical coordination—ERP integration managers can help oversee the design, development and testing of integrations between the ERP system and other technology you use, like customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain software. These specialists work closely with developers, ERP systems analysts and stakeholders to help ensure seamless data flow and system compatibility.

ERP implementations demand cross-functional teams with technical and functional expertise. By drawing on external resources for your company’s project, you can close skill gaps, but also gain repeatable frameworks, proven methodologies and objective insights that can elevate your entire program.

3. Cutover preparation

“Cutover” is the transition from old systems to the new ERP solution. It’s also one of the most sensitive phases of any implementation. Consultants and contract talent can help shoulder the burden of exhaustive cutover prep, which often includes tedious but mission-critical tasks such as:

Clearing subledgers and transactions—Work-in-progress, AR/AP, accruals and inventory must be up to date and reconciled.

Removing obsolete data—The elimination of outdated vendors, inactive SKUs or duplicate records in legacy systems to enable a clean transition.

Preparing data for migration—Using processes such as data cleansing and validation to confirm records align with new system structures and prevent costly downstream errors.

Testing cutover plans—Dry runs and simulations for surfacing timing issues or data gaps, allowing for refinement before the real thing.

A successful go-live depends on meticulous cleanup, reconciliation and migration efforts. With the right resources in place, your organization can avoid guesswork and move to a new platform more confidently.

4. Post-implementation support

Go-live is a milestone to celebrate, but it’s not the end of your ERP journey. The post-implementation phase is where the real value is created. During this time of heightened support and continuous improvement, your users are adjusting to new processes, and inevitable issues or bugs must be resolved. There are also opportunities to refine system settings or business workflows once you’re operating in the new environment.

Your business can realize the full value of your ERP investment by engaging skilled consultants and contract talent after go-live to assist with:

Resolving issues and backlogs—Technical consultants and functional leads can troubleshoot early hiccups, reduce ticket volumes and fine-tune system performance.

Standardizing processes—Post-go-live reviews help ensure departments aren’t introducing workarounds that could affect consistency or controls.

Training users and building documentation—Trainers, instructional designers and other contract talent with specialized skills can create desktop procedures, manuals and knowledge bases to drive user confidence and long-term adoption.

Improving reporting—Report writers and data analysts can refine dashboards, build custom reports and make sure executives receive timely, relevant insights.

Additionally, your business can engage ERP developers or functional specialists during the post-implementation phase to optimize the performance of your ERP system. These specialists can tweak system configurations, improve workflows, help you make the most of automation features and more.

Get more tips for building a high-performing ERP project team.

Advance your ERP journey with support from Robert Half and Protiviti

ERP transformation is more than a system upgrade—it’s a fundamental reset of how your business operates. Strategically integrating consulting and talent solutions into your resource strategy gives you the flexibility and depth of expertise to move forward with confidence—whether you need strategic direction, hands-on delivery support or experienced professionals to step into critical roles.

Robert Half and global consulting firm Protiviti, a Robert Half subsidiary, offer a distinct alternative to traditional system integrators. Our flexible engagement models—advisory, workstream delivery and resource augmentation—allow us to tailor support to your specific needs at every phase of your project.

Protiviti’s world-class consulting capabilities combined with Robert Half’s expansive network of specialized talent can help your business accelerate timelines, control costs and realize greater value from your ERP investment. You can learn more about our solutions and resources here. And when you’re ready to move forward with your ERP initiative, contact us to tell us about your project needs.

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