I’ve lost count of the projects that look like wins in month two and like expensive mistakes in month five. Everyone clicks the buttons when the consultant is standing next to them. Then habits kick in, and people go back to email and sticky notes. The tell is in the data: usage drops by roughly 40% between the eighth and sixteenth week after a new system goes live.
That cliff isn’t a software failure. It’s a management failure dressed up as a technical one.
Routine Is the Enemy of the New Way
People don’t resist change, they resist being the only one who looks stupid. In a 50-person tooling company, the warehouse staff quietly switched back to a paper pick list three weeks after go-live. The system was fine; the habit was stronger. The ERP Consulting team couldn’t fix that from behind a screen.
Three Ways to Push People Off the Cliff and Onto the New System
- Name a “system champion” in each department, not managers — someone others already call with questions.
- Schedule a 15-minute process review every Monday; show the numbers screen by screen, and fix annoyances publicly.
- Track real adoption by actions, not logins — count completed orders entered in the system, not how many times people opened it.
Make the Old Way Disappear
This sounds harsh, but it works. When the old paper form disappears from the printer room, people switch fast. We put past-due orders on a shared screen in the break room, so nobody wants to be the name with a red flag.
The point is simple: adoption is a management activity, not a support ticket. If you’re planning an ERP Consulting project, plan the adoption calendar first: who reviews adoption weekly, which two behaviors you’ll celebrate, and the week when the old shortcut stops working.