An ERP implementation can meet every technical milestone and still leave the business no better off. The value sits in the operating model the system is meant to serve: who decides what, on which data, inside which process.
Go-live is a milestone, not an outcome
Programmes are commonly measured by configuration completed, data migrated and cutover survived. Those are necessary. None of them tell you whether a month-end closes faster, whether a planner trusts the numbers, or whether the exception handling that used to live in spreadsheets has actually moved into the system.
When those questions are asked only after go-live, the answer is usually a stabilisation phase that quietly rebuilds the old ways of working alongside the new platform.
Decide the process before configuring it
Standard processes are a genuine advantage, but adopting them is an organisational decision, not a configuration setting. Each divergence from standard should be traceable to a business reason someone will defend, with the cost of maintaining it understood.
Where a divergence survives that test, record it. Where it does not, change the process — and plan the adoption work that change implies.
Governance that survives the programme
Master data ownership, authorisation design and change control outlive the implementation team. If they are set up as programme artefacts, they decay when the programme closes.
Assign them to the operating organisation early enough that the people who will run them help design them. That is also when segregation of duties and access design are cheapest to get right.