ERP Problems: Workarounds Cost You More Than You Think

I’ve walked into companies where everyone told me their ERP was working fine. But I helped them see that ERP problems were lurking behind the scenes.

• Orders were shipping.

• Finance was closing the books.

• Customers were being taken care of.

Then I sat down with one of their most experienced employees and asked her to show me how she actually did her job.

She opened a spreadsheet. Then another. She exported data from the ERP, adjusted it manually, checked a number against a separate report, and emailed someone in another department to confirm what the system couldn't tell her.

The process worked, but only because she knew how to make it work. And that’s when the real problem became clear: the ERP wasn’t supporting one of their best employees. Their best employee was supporting the ERP.

In the first article in this series, I talked about why successful ERP projects begin with business outcomes, not software features.

In the second, we looked at why you need to map how work actually happens before deciding what technology should support it.

Now we come to one of the clearest signs of ERP problems, when an organization relies on workarounds. These ERP issues often become visible only after the workaround has become part of the routine.

How Much Are ERP Workarounds Really Costing a Business?

Executives usually know what their ERP costs.

• Software licenses.

• Maintenance.

• Support.

• Hosting.

• Consulting.

Those costs are easy to see.

The cost of working around the ERP is much harder to find.

• An employee spends five hours every week rebuilding reports.

• Another spends several hours reconciling inventory.

• A manager chases approvals.

• Customer service calls the warehouse because inventory availability can't be trusted.

• Finance spends days at month-end combining information from multiple systems.

None of those activities appear on the income statement as "ERP inefficiency."

It's buried inside payroll. And the cost goes beyond employee time.

Manual work can lead to:

• Reporting errors

• Duplicate or inconsistent data

• Slower customer response

• Delayed decisions

• Key-person dependency

• Employee frustration

• Difficulty scaling

That's why ERP ROI shouldn't be measured only by what the software costs.

You also need to look at what the software forces your people to do.

The true cost should include labor hours, rework, process delays, key-person dependency, reporting risk, and the additional headcount required as transaction volume grows.

Steps to uncover costs:

• Measure recurring hours spent outside the ERP.

• Identify processes that require reconciliation or re-entry.

• Quantify errors, delays, and rework attributable to disconnected information.

• Determine whether growth requires additional administrative headcount.

Insight: The hidden cost usually does not appear in the ERP budget. It appears in payroll, slower throughput, delayed decisions, and lost capacity. Looking at these enterprise resource planning problems this way makes the real business impact easier to see.

Are Your Best Employees Compensating for Technology Gaps?

• Are they building spreadsheets to track information that's supposed to be in your ERP?

• Re-entering information from one system into another?

• Manually rebuilding reports?

• Calling coworkers because they don't trust what the system tells them?

If so, you have resourceful employees. But you may also have an ERP problem.

Insight: Because when experienced employees spend their days compensating for technology gaps, you're using some of your most valuable people as human integrations between systems that should be working together.

I've seen that happen more often than most executives realize.

The Employee Who "Knows How Everything Works"

Every organization seems to have one.

• The person everyone calls when something doesn't make sense.

• She knows which spreadsheet has the right inventory numbers.

• He knows which report has to be adjusted before Finance can use it.

• She knows the system says one thing, but you need to call the warehouse before promising anything to the customer.

These employees are incredibly valuable. They've learned how to keep the business moving despite gaps in the technology.

Over time, those workarounds become part of how the company operates.

Eventually, they stop looking like workarounds. They simply become "how we do things around here."

That's when you should pay attention.

What Are ERP Problems Caused by Workarounds?

ERP workarounds are the manual processes, spreadsheets, duplicate data entry, disconnected applications, emails, or informal procedures employees use when the ERP doesn't adequately support the work that needs to get done.

You might see employees:

• Export ERP data into Excel to create reports

• Maintain separate spreadsheets for inventory, production, purchasing, or forecasting

• Enter the same information into multiple systems

• Manually reconcile information between applications

• Email approvals because the ERP workflow is cumbersome

• Call another department to confirm information that should be readily available

• Keep personal lists to track orders or exceptions

Individually, these may not seem serious. Together, they're telling you something about your ERP problems.

Your ERP may no longer reflect the way your business actually operates. This is one of the most common issues with ERP systems: the technology and the way people actually work have drifted apart.

However, you can remedy that. For example, when you want to connect Business Central with other systems, you have tools at your fingertips to streamline the process.

And Microsoft Learn: Business Central Integration offers scenarios to understand integrations better.

The Spreadsheet Isn't the Problem. It's the Clue.

I don't have anything against spreadsheets. Excel is one of the most useful business tools ever created.

The question isn't whether your employees use spreadsheets. The question is why they need them.

There's a big difference between using Excel for a one-time analysis and running a mission-critical business process from a spreadsheet sitting on someone's desktop.

• If production depends on a spreadsheet, ask why.

• If Finance rebuilds the same report every month, ask why.

• If purchasing keeps a separate list of supplier commitments, ask why.

• If sales has its own forecast because it doesn't trust ERP data, ask why.

Don't blame the spreadsheet. Follow it.

It may lead you directly to one of the biggest opportunities for process improvement in your organization.

Your Best Employees Can Hide Your ERP Problems

This is one of the strange things about older ERP environments. The better your employees are, the longer an inadequate system can sometimes survive.

Why? Because good employees compensate.

They create a spreadsheet.

They develop a shortcut.

They remember the exception.

They call the right person.

They double-check the report.

They make the process work.

From the executive level, everything may appear fine.

Orders are shipping. Customers are being served. Financial statements are being produced.

But underneath those results may be an enormous amount of human effort holding everything together.

Your best employees can hide your ERP problems because they're so good at solving them.

And eventually those employees retire, leave, get promoted, or simply get tired of being the person everyone depends on.

That's when the organization discovers how much of its business process existed in someone's head instead of its systems.

What Are the Warning Signs Employees Are Working Around an ERP System? Here Are the Top Five:

If you're trying to determine whether your ERP is creating too much process friction, I recommend looking for five things.

1. Spreadsheets Have Become Systems

Don't count how many spreadsheets your organization uses. Ask which ones the business cannot operate without.

Which spreadsheet runs production?

Which one tracks customer commitments?

Which one tells purchasing what to order?

Which one gives executives the numbers they actually trust?

Those are the spreadsheets worth investigating.

2. Employees Enter the Same Information More Than Once

If information begins in CRM, gets re-entered into ERP, copied into a spreadsheet, and then manually entered somewhere else, follow that data.

Every re-entry creates labor, delay, and another opportunity for error.

3. Employees Don't Trust the System

Listen for phrases like:

• "I always double-check that number."

• "Call the warehouse first."

• "Don't use that report."

• "My spreadsheet is more accurate."

Once employees stop trusting the ERP, they create parallel ways of working.

And those parallel processes often make the data problem even worse.

4. Simple Questions Require Too Much Effort

"Can we ship this order Friday?"

"How much inventory do we really have?"

"Which products are profitable?"

"Why is this order late?"

Those shouldn't require three phone calls, two spreadsheets, and the time of an employee who's been with the company for fifteen years.

If ordinary business questions require extraordinary effort, your ERP isn't providing the visibility it should.

5. Growth Creates More Administrative Work

When transaction volume increases, does your organization become more efficient? Or do you simply add more people to handle additional manual work?

If every increase in volume requires more spreadsheets, reconciliations, and manual coordination, your processes aren't scaling.

Your employees are. And eventually, they can't.

Insight: A workaround becomes strategically dangerous when the organization no longer recognizes it as a workaround and starts treating it as the official process

Ask What Happens When Your Expert Goes on Vacation

Here's a simple test.

Pick a critical business process and ask:

"What happens if the person who knows this process best is gone for three weeks?"

Does someone else know which spreadsheet to use?

Which numbers need to be adjusted?

Which exceptions matter?

Who needs to approve what?

What to do when the normal process fails?

If the answer is, "We'd probably have to call them," you don't just have an employee dependency.

You have a process and technology problem.

A well-designed ERP doesn't eliminate the need for experienced employees.

It lets experienced employees spend their time applying judgment instead of remembering workarounds.

Don't Automate Every Workaround

Once organizations identify these problems, there's a temptation to immediately automate them.

Be careful.

As I discussed in the second article, don't pave the cow path. Organizations can easily digitize old detours and automate processes that should have been redesigned instead.

Before replacing a spreadsheet or automating a manual step, ask:

Why does this workaround exist?

Maybe the ERP wasn't configured correctly.

Maybe the process changed but the system didn't.

Maybe two systems need to be integrated.

Maybe employees need better training.

Maybe a customization no longer makes sense.

Or maybe the business really has outgrown the technology.

Those problems require very different solutions. Finding the right ERP problems and solutions starts with understanding the root cause before choosing the technology response.

For instance, business process improvement may be the goal. Workflow automation with the Power Platform may be one way to get there.

And the objective isn't to eliminate every spreadsheet. It's to eliminate unnecessary friction.

Do ERP Workarounds Mean We Need to Replace Our ERP?

ERP workarounds do not automatically mean an organization needs a new ERP.

A workaround may result from poor configuration, outdated processes, missing integrations, reporting gaps, insufficient training, or software limitations.

The right first step is to identify why each workaround exists, then determine whether the best solution is process redesign, configuration, integration, automation, training, customization, or ERP replacement.

ERP problems and remedies:

• Configuration problem → optimize the existing ERP.

• Disconnected systems → evaluate integration.

• Manual approval → consider workflow automation.

• Adoption problem → improve process design and training.

• Fundamental capability or scalability gap → evaluate modernization/replacement.

The number of workarounds matters less than their business criticality and root cause.

Workarounds are a warning sign.

• Sometimes your existing ERP has capabilities you're simply not using.

• Sometimes a process needs to be redesigned.

• Sometimes an integration can eliminate duplicate entry.

• Sometimes better reporting or training solves the problem.

• And sometimes the business has genuinely outgrown the technology.

That's why I wouldn't start with "Do we need a new ERP?"

I'd start with "Why are our employees working around the ERP we already have?"

The answer will tell you much more about what needs to change.

However, a new ERP system may be in order if you are still operating on a legacy system. Over time, workarounds can accumulate until they begin limiting efficiency, visibility, and growth.  Legacy ERP modernization may be the better next step.

These legacy ERP challenges often build gradually, making them easy to accept as normal until they begin limiting growth.

Start With the People Who Know Where the Friction Is

If I were evaluating an ERP environment tomorrow, I wouldn't begin by asking executives for another software wish list.

I'd talk to the people doing the work.

I'd ask:

• What do you do outside the ERP every day?

• What information is difficult to find?

• What do you enter more than once?

• Which reports do you rebuild manually?

• Which numbers do you double-check?

• Where do approvals get stuck?

• What takes much longer than it should?

Then I'd ask my favorite question:

"Show me."

Watch the employee do the work.

That spreadsheet with fourteen tabs may tell you more about your ERP requirements than a hundred-item feature checklist.

If I want to solve industry-specific issues, for instance, I might seek help from a subject matter expert to understand what discovery / diagnostic questions to ask before selecting an ERP for project-based manufacturing.

That's also why, as I discussed in Part 2, the people performing the processes need to be involved. Executives know how a process is supposed to work. Employees know how it really works.

What Should Your ERP Do for Your Employees?

We spend a lot of time asking what an ERP should do for the business.

• Improve profitability.

• Increase visibility.

• Support growth.

• Strengthen controls.

But those outcomes depend on employees being able to do their jobs effectively.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central helps people:

• Find information without hunting for it

• Enter information once and use it throughout the business

• Trust the data they're seeing

• Automate repetitive tasks

• Move approvals forward faster

• Make better decisions with less manual preparation

AI is also changing what's possible inside modern ERP systems, helping employees automate repetitive work, find information faster, and accomplish more without adding more manual processes.

AI has now evolved to be a helpful tool for employees to accomplish more for less cost. How does AI interact directly with ERP systems like Business Central? With  AI-ready ERP workflows to relieve the burden and costs from development.

Your ERP should make experienced employees more valuable, not turn them into highly paid data-entry clerks.

Final Thoughts

I've spent decades working with ERP systems, and technology has changed enormously.

But one thing hasn't changed.

The people closest to the work usually know where the problems are.

• Listen to them.

• Look at their spreadsheets.

• Watch the manual steps.

• Ask why they're entering information twice.

• Find out which reports they don't trust.

• Pay attention to the processes being held together by someone's memory and experience.

Your best employees shouldn't have to protect the business from the limitations of its technology.

Your technology should help your best employees become even better at what they do.

That's when ERP stops being a system employees work around and starts becoming a system the business can build on.

Not sure how much your ERP workarounds are really costing you? 

An ERP Process Assessment can help identify ERP problems where manual work, disconnected processes, and technology gaps are creating unnecessary cost and risk.

Schedule an ERP Process Assessment.

About the Author 

Terri Marello, President of Key Partner Solutions, is a thought leader in the Microsoft Dynamics space and the author of the LinkedIn newsletter "Why Ask Why?", where she explores the intersection of technology and business strategy.

Subscribe now for more insights straight to your inbox.

Key Partner Solutions is an experienced Microsoft VAR with the in-house skills to optimize your business and smoothly migrate to cloud-based Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.