Trick or Treat: The promise and peril of best practices for ERP
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects provide tools, or ERP software solutions, for improving business processes, empowering employees, and ultimately transforming the entire organization. Project leaders from the government usually go into a project seeking “best practices” or proven approaches that bring together policy, process, and technology for optimizing administrative functions and getting superior results. For this reason, it’s not surprising that software vendors present themselves as selling “best practices” that include not only ready-made tools built to support best practices, but also knowledge, recommendations, and methodologies that provide these desired best practices. In practice, however, GFOA has found that while both the government and the vendor use the same term—“best practice”— they are often referring to two different things. This leads to confusion, conflict, and disappointment. In this article, we explain how to include a best practice-focus in your ERP project and benefit from the experiences of leading organizations, avoiding common tricks and traps along the way.
Publication Date: October 2025
Author: Mike Mucha
