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Around 80% of ERP projects fail to deliver their business case – and excessive customisation is the most common culprit. Here is why ‘adopt not adapt’ is the most important principle in modern ERP delivery.
The customisation trap
Every ERP programme begins with good intentions. Teams want the new system to fit exactly how the organisation works today, so they customise – a field here, a bespoke workflow there, an integration to preserve a familiar report. Each change seems reasonable in isolation. Collectively, they turn a modern, upgradeable platform into what one major consultancy memorably calls a ‘block of concrete’: rigid, expensive to maintain, and painful to upgrade.
The data is sobering. Research indicates that roughly 80% of ERP projects fail to achieve their business-case benefits, with the most serious mistake being ambitious standardisation attempted without a true understanding of the organisation's operating model and governance. Heavy customisation is how that failure usually manifests – organisations recreate their old processes inside new software and inherit all the old problems, plus a maintenance burden that grows with every release.
The core idea
Adopt, not adapt: start from best-practice ERP processes and only deviate where a defensible, organisation-agreed business case exists. Configure the standard solution rather than rebuilding it.
What ‘adopt not adapt’ actually means
‘Adopt not adapt’ is not a refusal to change anything – it is a discipline about where change is justified. It draws a clear line between two very different things. Necessary adaptation addresses genuine local implementation needs without altering the core solution. Unnecessary customisation rebuilds standard functionality to mirror legacy habits. The first is healthy; the second is where projects go to die.
In practice, this means configuring the standard solution to the organisation, adopting embedded best-practice processes, and reserving genuine customisation for the small set of requirements where a standard process truly cannot meet a defensible need. Healthcare consortia that built fully templated, standardised cloud solutions – usable ‘off the shelf from day one’ with quarterly cloud updates applied automatically – demonstrate the model at scale, serving tens of thousands of users across dozens of organisations.
Why it pays off
The benefits compound over the life of the system. Faster time-to-value, because teams configure rather than build. Lower total cost of ownership, because there is less bespoke code to maintain. Easier upgrades, because the system stays close to standard and absorbs vendor updates cleanly. Shared learning, because organisations on the same template improve together. And, perhaps most importantly, the avoidance of future remediation – the expensive, drawn-out work of untangling customisations that should never have been built.
- Faster deployment and time-to-value versus bespoke builds.
- Lower total cost of ownership and a lighter maintenance burden.
- Clean, low-risk upgrades as the platform stays close to standard.
- Shared learning and continuous improvement across organisations on a common template.
- Internal teams freed from sustaining custom code.
Making it real: the Fit-to-Standard workshop
The principle only works if the design process reinforces it. VE3 uses Fit-to-Standard workshops built on a pre-configured ‘Starter System’ – a live, working instance of the standard solution. Instead of gathering requirements against a blank page, stakeholders interact with best-practice processes from day one and focus the conversation on genuine gaps. This naturally steers teams toward adoption, surfaces the handful of true exceptions early, and builds understanding and buy-in long before go-live.
“Customisation feels like control, but it is usually the opposite. The organisations that win with ERP are the ones disciplined enough to change their processes to the system – not the system to their processes.” — VE3 perspective on ERP delivery
The bottom line
ERP is a once-in-a-decade investment; most systems are replaced only every ten to fifteen years. That makes the discipline of ‘adopt not adapt’ not a constraint but a strategy – one that protects the investment, accelerates value and keeps the platform evolving instead of ossifying. For public-sector and healthcare organisations under real financial pressure, it is also the most reliable route to delivering the benefits the business case promised.
About VE3
VE3 is a global technology consultancy that engineers transformation through cloud, data, AI and enterprise platforms. With teams across the UK, India and beyond, VE3 combines the agility of a specialist firm with the depth of a global consultancy – helping public-sector and enterprise organisations modernise with confidence. In healthcare and the wider public sector, VE3 brings deep ERP and SAP S/4HANA expertise, an “adopt not adapt” delivery philosophy, and a relentless focus on building lasting client capability rather than dependency. To explore how VE3 can support your ERP, finance and procurement, or shared-services transformation, visit ve3.global. Innovating Ideas. Delivering Results.
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