7. Knowledge walks out the doors

Symptoms: You have contractors and consultants who have demonstrated knowledge of your business processes and the ERP software. These contractors spend countless hours configuring the system, developing interfaces, reports, testing the system, and solving trouble tickets for end users.  

Due to project’s deadlines and priorities your contractors follow a loose, disorganized and unstructured approach for documenting their work deliverables and work products. Once your contractors receive better offers they walk out of your project. A few months later internal and external audits come to your projects and you are unaware of what your contractors accomplished, how they accomplished their work, and how their results were stored if at all. Your project loses credibility and faces a crisis in attempting to reestablish what the departed contractors accomplished during their tenure.  

Suggestions: Although high consulting turnover is invariably inevitable at most ERP implementations there are some pointers that you can observe to mitigate the damage that the departing resources cause to the project (assuming voluntary withdrawal from the project). Establish a repository (i.e. shared drive) where stored documents and artifacts follow strict naming standards. Create a QA (Quality Assurance) team whereby the QA representatives enforce project standards and guidelines. Mandate weekly status reports from all contractors where all accomplishments are reported.  

Set up meetings at least 2 to 3 days before the contractor departs to review work products and areas of high risk. Obtain contractors contact information before he departs in the event of project emergencies.