ERP implementations have been failing at an alarming rate for decades. The question is whether those failure rates improved in the mid-2020s.
Unfortunately, they didn’t.
What’s changed is how these failures show up. Cloud has raised the stakes. Release cycles are faster. Integrations are messier. AI is adding yet another layer of complexity. The gap between “where you are today” and “where the software wants you to be” keeps getting wider, which means the operational blast radius of a bad go-live is bigger than ever.
Below are a few of the most instructive ERP failures from 2025 (or close enough to it) that highlight what’s actually driving these projects off the rails.
Failure #1: Quebec’s SAAQclic rollout (public sector, public chaos)
If you want a case study in how poor readiness becomes instant operational disruption, look at Quebec’s auto licensing agency (SAAQ) and its SAAQclic rollout. The launch created major service issues that affected day-to-day transactions, including people struggling to access services and long waits for basic needs.
Public-sector failures also tend to leave a paper trail. Auditor reporting pointed to the usual suspects: insufficient testing, weak planning, training gaps, data issues, and governance breakdowns.
What to learn from it
- Testing is not a checkbox. It’s your last real line of defense.
- Training is not “send a PDF and schedule a webinar.”
- If warning signs show up pre-go-live, “powering through” is how you turn a project problem into an operational crisis.
Failure #2: Zimmer Biomet’s ERP disruption (when the go-live breaks the business)
Zimmer Biomet is a reminder that failure doesn’t always mean “the system never went live.” Sometimes the system goes live and the business can’t function the way it needs to.
Public reporting described serious disruption tied to ERP issues, enough that the company ultimately moved to replace the system.
This is the part too many leadership teams underestimate: even a short operational disruption can cost more than the entire business case you used to justify the ERP in the first place. Missed shipments, delayed orders, customer frustration, and revenue impacts that add up fast.
What to learn from it
- Go-live timing matters. If the cutover window is built on heroics, you’re already in trouble.
- “The integrator says we’re fine” is not a readiness strategy.
- If you cannot run core order-to-cash cleanly, you don’t have an ERP go-live. You have a business interruption event.
Failure #3: Birmingham City Council’s Oracle finance system (manual workarounds at scale)
Birmingham City Council’s situation shows what happens when a finance system implementation fails quietly at first, then becomes a long-running operational drag.
Reporting described an Oracle accounting system rollout that generated thousands of issues and forced major manual workarounds, including significant effort to do accounts “by hand.”
The lesson here is not “Oracle bad” or “ERP bad.” The lesson is that when finance systems don’t work, you lose visibility, control, and trust, internally and externally. That becomes a compounding crisis.
What to learn from it
- If the system can’t produce reliable financial outputs, the organization is flying blind.
- Workarounds are not neutral. They become permanent, expensive, morale-destroying operating models.
- Weak governance, plus weak transparency, plus weak controls, leads to inevitable escalation.
The biggest surprise: an ERP “failure” without a customer go-live
One of the most important failure signals in this time period wasn’t a single customer implementation. It was the market waking up to how aggressively some vendors are trying to control customer options.
SAP under EU antitrust scrutiny
Reuters reported on EU antitrust scrutiny related to SAP and practices affecting customers’ ability to choose third-party maintenance/support alternatives.
Celonis vs. SAP
Separately, the Celonis v. SAP dispute has highlighted the battleground around data access and competitive tooling in the SAP ecosystem, with court developments reported in late 2025.
Why this matters
Even if your implementation is “fine,” the long-term risk is waking up five years from now with fewer support options, higher renewal leverage on the vendor side, higher switching costs, and more commercial pressure to upgrade “because you have to,” not because the business case is there.
That’s not transformation. That’s captivity.
The patterns that keep showing up (and what to do about them)
Across these examples, the common thread is not “bad software.” It’s a bad implementation of discipline:
- Weak internal ownership (outsourcing accountability to an SI)
- Inadequate testing (especially end-to-end and performance)
- Poor data migration discipline (garbage in leads to garbage out)
- Thin change management (training does not equal adoption)
- Governance that reacts too late, or ignores warning signs
The “no excuses” checklist I’d use before any go-live
- A real Phase 0: scope discipline, operating model clarity, and governance that can say “stop”
- Independent quality assurance that reports to you, not the SI
- End-to-end process tests using real scenarios (order spikes, edge cases, exceptions)
- Cutover rehearsals that match reality, not a slide deck
- A readiness gate that includes business leaders who can veto the go-live
If you want more failure case studies and a practical prescription for how to keep your transformation out of the ditch, that’s exactly why I wrote Welcome to the Jungle. Most organizations don’t fail from a lack of effort. They fail from a lack of control.
Eric is recognized globally as a leading voice in digital transformation and ERP strategy. Over the past two decades, he has helped hundreds of organizations – including Nucor Steel, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, Kodak, Coors, Boeing, and Duke Energy – define their technology roadmaps, modernize complex operations, and deliver real business value from large-scale transformation initiatives.
As Founder and CEO of Third Stage Consulting, Eric leads an independent, technology-agnostic advisory firm focused on helping clients navigate the shift from traditional ERP to more flexible, AI-enabled Digital Enterprise Operations (DEO) models. His work spans ERP selection, implementation quality assurance, organizational change, and operating model design across a wide range of industries and geographies.
Eric is also a prolific thought leader, known for his pragmatic takes on AI, cloud, and enterprise software trends, as well as his firm’s benchmark research and frameworks for de-risking transformation. He is dedicated to helping executive teams cut through vendor hype, make confident investment decisions, and successfully reach the “third stage” of their digital evolution.
