We are undergoing a major enterprise resource planning software implementation that spans sales, finance, and operations. Who should own this temporary, high-impact seat on our Accountability Chart to ensure it does not fail?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Large-scale software implementations fail when there is joint accountability. If your sales, finance, and operations leaders all share ownership of the project, nobody is actually accountable. To ensure success, you must create a dedicated, temporary seat on your Accountability Chart for this initiative.

We call this the ERP Project Lead seat. This seat reports directly to the Integrator, not to any of the individual department heads. This reporting line is critical because the project lead must have the authority to make cross-functional decisions without getting bogged down in department-level politics.

The person occupying this seat must pass the GWC™ test completely. They must thoroughly understand the operational workflows of the entire business, passionately want to drive the project to completion, and possess the project management capacity to keep the implementation on schedule.

If you do not have an internal leader with the capacity to own this seat full-time, do not try to squeeze it into an existing leader's busy day. That is a guaranteed way to blow past your timeline and budget. Instead, bring in a fractional or contract project manager to sit in this temporary seat. They will run the project's Level 10 Meeting™ and drive execution daily. Once the system is fully implemented and adopted, the seat is retired, and long-term maintenance roles are transitioned to the permanent seats on your Accountability Chart.