June 15, 2025 · 6 min read
A mid-market manufacturing client came to us after an 18-month SAP implementation stalled at $180K spent with no go-live date in sight. The core issue wasn't SAP itself — it was that the platform was built for enterprises ten times their size, and every customisation required expensive consultant hours.
We scoped a custom ERP covering exactly the workflows the business used — inventory, production planning and supplier management — without the configuration overhead of modules they'd never touch.
The custom build went live in under 9 months, at roughly 55% of the remaining SAP budget, and matched the team's existing processes instead of forcing them to change how they worked.
The lesson isn't that SAP is wrong — it's that platform choice should match company scale, not brand recognition.
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