A distribution company with $84M in revenue asked for one small thing during design: their pricing screen should show the customer’s last three orders. Reasonable request. It took four days to build.
Eighteen months later we counted the change log. 210 modifications, 62 custom reports, and a $310,000 annual bill just to keep them working through upgrades. The original request had cost about $2,400.
How small requests become permanent overhead
Nobody signs off on $310,000. They sign off on 210 decisions of $1,500 each, spread over a year, each one approved by a different manager who never sees the total.
The pricing screen was the gateway. Once the team learned that screens could be changed, every department had a list. The warehouse wanted a custom label. Finance wanted a custom aging report. Sales wanted a custom quote PDF. Each one was small. Together they made the system un-upgradeable.
- Put every change request on one shared log with an estimated annual maintenance cost, not just a build cost. Multiply build hours by 0.25 for the yearly upkeep.
- Require the requester’s manager to sign the maintenance line, not just the project line.
- Set a hard ceiling before design starts — for example, no more than 15 modifications in year one — and publish it.
- Review the log in a 30-minute monthly meeting with the finance controller present. Visibility alone kills about a third of requests.
The 20-minute test that filters most requests
Before anything gets built, ask the requester to run the process manually for 20 minutes using the standard system plus a spreadsheet. Two things happen. About half the requests disappear because the standard way is fine once someone actually tries it. The other half come back sharper and cheaper.
On the distribution project, we re-ran the pricing request this way. The real need was not a screen. It was a monthly price review meeting with a one-page exception report. We built a report instead of a screen and saved 200 hours of upgrade work over three years.
What a healthy change log looks like
Aim for under 20 modifications for a company of 200 to 400 users. Above 40, your upgrade path gets expensive and slow. That is the line where ERP Consulting pays for itself — not by saying no, but by pricing the yes.
- Export your change log and add two columns: estimated annual maintenance hours and who approved it.
- Sort by maintenance hours. The top 10 items are your candidates to retire at the next upgrade.
- Book a 45-minute session with the top three requesters and ask what decision the customization supports. If nobody can name one, retire it.
One counterintuitive rule worth trying: make the requester write the help-desk ticket template for their own customization. People who have to support their own idea tend to scope it tighter.