Assessing Risk in Complex ERP Implementations

The client

Austin Engineering (Austin) is an Australian-based, global engineering and manufacturing company who design and manufacture customised dump trucks’ bodies, buckets, water tanks and other ancillary products used in the mining industry.

To sustain growth and align to the ‘One Austin’ strategy, Austin needed a future-ready and scalable Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). An ERP implementation involves complex change that affects the entire business and can drastically alter the way a business operates. To find out key areas of risk, Austin needed a Independent Assurance review on the progress and outcomes of their ERP implementation, by examining the management and delivery of the ERP.

Our approach

We applied a comprehensive review of project documentation and people engagement to understand project strengths, accomplishments, concerns and progress.

To complete the quality assurance, we first reviewed the project documentation and deliverables, documenting questions for stakeholders across key focus areas including:

• Project Management and Governance
• Solution Design and Testing
• Change Management and Training
• Business Case & Benefit Management
• Technical Solution
• Vendor Management

After the initial documentation review, we interviewed the business across the steering committee and business leaders to further inform our review. Combined insights were categorised into seven review dimensions which included key findings and recommendations. See review dimensions below.

The outcome

The review provided assurance to Austin that the implementation is set-up for a successful delivery and brought to light risks and/or issues in the project’s current execution and future delivery.

In particular, the detailed review identified key areas that put the project at risk, provided recommendations to overcome risks and allowed Austin to accelerate specific activities where the risk was mitigated.