Our industry has a problem. There is a moment in every large-scale ERP transformation where the organization asks the question: “why aren’t we seeing the results we expected?”
Across the last decade, the majority of ERP and transformation programs meet their technical milestones. But fewer than 30–40% deliver sustained operational outcomes within the first 12–18 months.
The platform is the same in the successful implementations and the failed ones. Nobody has a secret version that works better.
It is a misunderstanding of where value is actually created.
The Real Variable
I’ve spent my career in this space. Worked with family-owned manufacturers, private equity-backed platforms, global distribution networks. And across industries and engagement types, the same patterns keep showing up:
- 20–30% variance in process execution across plants, divisions, or acquired entities
- 15–25% of critical data elements requiring manual intervention after go-live
- Integration latency or failure impacting 5–10% of transactions, often silently
- In many cases, fewer than 60% of users fully adopting the intended workflows
And when you get under the hood, you discover the technology is almost never the root cause.
The root cause is the team that touched it.
It’s the partner who put junior consultants on it because senior people were on a bigger account. It’s the firm that sold a nine-month timeline knowing it would take eighteen.
How We Got Here
The ERP consulting industry has settled into a model that is structurally designed to underdeliver. The economics of the dominant model make it almost inevitable.
Typically, a large consulting firm wins an engagement. They staff it with a thin layer of senior people for the sales process and the kickoff.
But then those senior people rotate off to focus on the next sale, and the project gets handed to a bench of junior resources who may have never worked in your industry. The project manager is probably managing four or five engagements simultaneously.
It keeps winning because on a spreadsheet it looks like the smart bet. Lower hourly rates. More bodies for the budget.
But as a result decisions get abstracted through a bunch of layers. Timelines slip and scopes get renegotiated. The client’s team, who are supposed to be running their business, end up spending half their time managing the consulting firm instead.
And when things go sideways, what’s the answer? Throw more bodies at it. More hours, billed at the same rate, to fix the thing that shouldn’t have been broken in the first place.
Doppio earned its reputation as being the “rescue firm”. The folks who parachute in to fix botched implementations. Which has been flattering. But it can also be frustrating, having to re-live the same movie over and over.
In the last few years, we’ve earned our seat at the table up front. We’ve earned the right to do the implementation work, to help clients do it right the first time. We’ve earned the trust of our clients (and Infor), which we’re grateful for.
But all these lessons have informed where we’re headed. Have shaped our decisions around the type of firm we want to be.
What We are Building
We have deliberately gone the opposite direction of the market. Small, senior teams. North American subject matter experts who understand your business processes. Consultants who have done this before, at companies like yours.
We have become obsessed with outcomes. Most ERP partners define success as “we delivered the scope on the SOW.” We define it as unlocking tangible business results.
Which has implications on how we staff projects. It means our project managers are embedded from day one. When something breaks post-go-live, we fix it, because we built it. We don’t hand you off to a separate team that has never seen your configuration. The people who built your system are the people who support it.
That’s not an add-on. We started as a managed services provider. From day one, the model was built around what happens after go-live, because that’s where most implementations quietly fall apart. Today, >35% of our revenue still comes from managed services. It’s the reason we think about implementation differently than firms who walk away once the SOW is closed.
We know what an ERP needs to do inside a dairy plant versus a protein processor versus an industrial equipment operation. We understand the micro-vertical differences. Why a bakery’s supply chain configuration looks nothing like a fashion company’s. That specificity is what lets us move faster and break less.
Over 700 projects and 100+ customers later, we have never been pulled off a project. Not once. I mention that because in this industry, it’s unusual enough to be worth saying out loud. Consulting firms get fired from ERP projects all the time. It’s so common that most RFPs include termination-for-convenience clauses as standard. The fact that we’ve never triggered one tells you something about how we show up.
Who This Is For
We’ve also been deliberate about who we’re trying to serve.
We serve PE-backed manufacturers and distributors. We understand what your sponsors are looking at during diligence, and what the board expects. Whether it’s a three-to-five year hold or a long-term platform play, the system needs to be producing measurable value. We know that sponsors ultimately care about supply chain optimization and financial automation, dollars and percentage gains. And we know how to make that happen.
We serve family-owned businesses preparing for their next chapter. Whether that’s a transaction, a generational transition, or a growth phase the current systems can’t support. We’ve been through it with companies like yours, and we know what it takes to get the platform ready for what’s coming.
And we serve IT and Operations leaders who inherited an ERP environment that was implemented years ago by a firm that no longer supports it. We’ve walked into that situation dozens of times. We know how to assess what you have, stabilize it, and build a path to get actual value out of the investment your company already made.
This is about to matter even more. As AI gets embedded into these platforms. Everyone could have access to the same capabilities – if they so choose. But, many organizations will fail to get results from them due to the speed of their adoption process. It will still require people who understand both the technology and your business to maximize the utility of these new capabilities. Thus, it will be another manifestation of the same pattern.
What We Believe
Lastly, all of this has informed what we value. What we believe about the world.
We believe in integrity over expedience. We’d rather lose a deal than over-claim (or over-bill).
We believe in ownership, not delivery. Our AMS model isn’t just a revenue strategy. It reflects a conviction that the work isn’t done at go-live. It’s done when the client is actually getting value.
We believe in craftsmanship. In an industry hollowed out by the body-shop model, we insist that expertise matters.
We believe in directness as a sign of respect. Hard conversations up front rather than change orders later. In an industry where scope creep is normalized, we believe in candor.
Ultimately, we believe upper middle market and lower enterprise organizations deserve the same quality of consulting that Fortune 500 companies get. You shouldn’t have to choose between a firm that understands your industry and one you can afford.
That’s what we’re building. If any of this resonates, let’s talk.
