An ERP that is installed is not an ERP that is used. Many companies pay for a system, then find six months later that sales still quote from spreadsheets, the storekeeper keeps stock on paper and the accountant retypes everything at month-end. The software is fine; the habit never changed. Adoption is a management job as much as a training one, and it can be planned. Here is how.
Why adoption fails
- Training happened once, in a room, on demo data. People forget within a week.
- The system made someone's job harder. Extra fields, extra clicks, with no benefit to the person doing the entry.
- Leaders still accept the old way. If the director asks for a spreadsheet, the spreadsheet survives.
- Nobody owns the system after go-live. Questions pile up, small issues are never fixed, trust drains away.
Plan adoption from the start of the project
- Name a system owner with authority across departments, usually the finance or operations manager.
- Choose champions: one respected person per department who learns first, tests, and helps colleagues.
- Define "using the system" in numbers, such as "100% of sales orders and invoices created in the ERP from the first day of month two".
- Remove what the system replaces. Retire the old spreadsheet or lock it read-only on a set date.
Train by role, on your own data
| Role | Training focus | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Sales | Quotations, orders, customer history, discounts and approvals | Short hands-on sessions using live customer examples |
| Storekeepers and warehouse | Receiving, issuing, transfers, counts, barcodes | On the shop floor with the real scanners |
| Accounts | Invoices, bills, payments, bank matching, VAT reports, month-end close | Parallel run with last month's data |
| Managers | Dashboards, approvals, reading reports | 30-minute sessions, repeated after a month |
| Administrators | Users, roles, backups, master data rules | Detailed walkthrough and written runbook |
Use a training copy of the system with your real customers, items and prices. Give every user a one-page cheat sheet for their five most common tasks. Offer sessions in the language people are comfortable in, and keep screenshots in English and Arabic where your documents use both.
Support in the first weeks
- A visible help desk: a phone number and WhatsApp group answered within minutes during the first fortnight.
- Floor-walking: the project team sits with each department for the first days, solving small problems on the spot.
- A fix list: every complaint goes on a list with an owner and a date, and the list is reviewed in a short weekly meeting.
- Quick wins: fix the three biggest irritations early, even if they are small, to show the system is listening.
Leadership behaviours that matter
- Ask for reports from the system, not from a person's spreadsheet.
- Approve purchases and discounts in the system, not by message.
- Review a short adoption dashboard weekly: logins, transactions created, exceptions.
- Thank the people who changed their habits first.
The 30-60-90 day view
- Day 30: core transactions (sales, purchase, stock moves) are entered in the system, and parallel records are closed.
- Day 60: the first full month-end is closed from the system and reports match the books.
- Day 90: second round of training, improvements from the fix list delivered, and a review of what the system should do next.
When people still resist
Listen first. Resistance often points to a real problem: a screen that needs too many fields, a missing report, an approval that blocks urgent work. Adjust the system where the complaint is fair, and hold the line where it is only habit. If the system keeps getting in the way of how the business really works, it may be the wrong fit, and customization is better than workarounds. See ERP software in Dubai and data migration for the groundwork that makes adoption easier.