The Conflict Nobody Talks About in ERP Implementations
- May 28
- 4 min read
Every ERP implementation has a moment where the tension in the room becomes undeniable.
Maybe it's a key user who pushes back hard in a requirements workshop. A department head who stops showing up to project meetings. A frontline supervisor who smiles and nods through every training session then keeps running the same spreadsheet they've used for six years.
We call it resistance. We call it change fatigue. We call it a people problem.
But what it really is in most cases is unresolved conflict. And no one on the project team was trained to handle it.
I've been on both sides of this. As a stakeholder sitting across from consultants I didn't fully know. As a consultant walking into organizations where my presence alone created friction.
What I've learned across both roles is this. Conflict in an ERP implementation isn't a sign something is wrong. It's a sign something real is happening. The question is whether you know how to work with it.
Earlier this year I sat down to talk about exactly this, how to handle conflict in the workplace. A lot of what came out of that conversation applies directly to what I see in ERP projects every day. I want to share some of it here.
Conflict is not the enemy. Avoidance is.
One of the first things I said in that conversation was that we see conflict as a bad thing. It's not necessarily a bad thing. It's an opportunity to learn.
That reframe matters enormously in an ERP context. When a department head pushes back on a process change, that's information. When a frontline team goes quiet in a training session, that's a signal. When a stakeholder starts raising concerns about the timeline, that's an opening not a threat.
The instinct on most project teams is to manage around that friction. Keep the project moving. Resolve it offline. Document it as a risk and move on.
But here's what I've seen happen when conflict gets avoided consistently. It becomes a muscle. And then all you ever do is avoid conflict. By the time you hit go-live, you haven't resolved anything you've just deferred it. And deferred conflict shows up as adoption failure, workarounds, and a team that never fully owns the system.
The organizations that get the most out of their ERP investment are the ones that learned how to work through conflict early, not around it.
The framework that actually works
In the workshop, a framework I've started applying in my own client engagements was introduced. Observation, Feeling, Need, Request.
Here's how it works in practice, translated into an ERP context.
Observation State what happened. Not what you felt about it. Not what you assumed. What factually, undeniably occurred. "In the last three project meetings, the team hasn't had a representative present." No emotion. No accusation. Just the observable fact.
Feeling Share the impact. Not a judgment of the other person. "When that happens, I'm concerned we're building a solution without the input of the people who will use it most." Short. Honest. No elaboration needed.
Need Name the higher-level need. The thing everyone can agree on. "The need is that we build something the team can actually adopt and own." Nobody in the room is going to argue against that. It shifts the conversation from adversarial to aligned.
Request Make a specific, reasonable ask. Not a demand. Not an ultimatum. "Can we identify one person from the team who can be in the room for the next two sessions?" That's actionable. That's something people can say yes to.
I've watched this approach completely change the dynamic in a room. Not because it's magic but because it removes the personal charge from a conversation that was heading somewhere unproductive and redirects it toward the problem that actually needs solving.
The incentive problem nobody wants to name
One of the most honest moments in that conversation was when we talked about misaligned incentives. This is one of the most common and least-discussed sources of conflict in ERP implementations.
Your implementation partner is incentivized to reach go-live. That's when their engagement closes. That's when the contract is fulfilled. Your internal IT team may be incentivized to minimize customizations. Your department heads are incentivized to protect their team's productivity. Your frontline users aren't incentivized to change anything at all.
None of these people are wrong. None of them are trying to sabotage the project. But when incentives aren't aligned, the conflict that surfaces looks personal even when it isn't.
The fix isn't to ignore the incentive structure. It's to name it. To get the right people in a room and ask openly what does success look like for each of us, and where are those definitions in conflict? That conversation, as uncomfortable as it is, is the one that prevents six months of friction from accumulating into a failed adoption.
Seek first to understand
The thread that runs through all of this the podcast conversation, my experience in the field, and the EPI-Change™ work I do with clients is curiosity.
I referenced How to win friends and influence people in that workshop. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. In an ERP context that means before you diagnose the resistance, before you escalate the issue, before you redesign the training plan ask questions. Get into the room with the people who are struggling and find out what's actually going on.
Most of the time it's not what you think. It's not stubbornness. It's not sabotage. It's an unmet need that nobody asked about early enough.
That's the conflict nobody talks about in ERP implementations. And it's the one worth learning to handle.
Watch the full conversation
If this resonated, the full conversation available on YouTube.
And if you're navigating conflict inside an active ERP project right now whether you're a stakeholder, a project lead, or a consultant I'm happy to talk through what you're seeing.
Charlie Shephard is the founder of CLER Solutions, an IFS Cloud implementation support and training firm. He works with asset-heavy organizations to close the gap between ERP go-live and real adoption.