Planning a January Go-Live? This Quarter's Earnings Calls Show What a Rushed ERP Cutover Costs

Every year around this time, I get the same call. A company has an ERP or major system go-live set for January 1. The date was picked eighteen months ago because it lines up with the fiscal year. The project team says they're "mostly ready." The CEO wants to know whether to believe them.

This year, I'd point them to the third-quarter earnings calls.

What This Quarter Showed Us

• •Acushnet (Titleist and FootJoy) went live on its new ERP in North America and at its golf ball plant in Thailand in Q3. On its November 4 call, the company reported temporary disruption in custom embroidery that hit FootJoy and golf gear. SG&A rose $12 million, partly from ERP-related IT expenses.
• •Tennant Company went live in North America in November 2025. The company lost about three weeks of order and parts processing, estimated a roughly $30 million hit to fourth-quarter sales, raised its 2026 ERP spending from about $5 million to more than $20 million, and paused its European rollout. On its November 3 call this year, it was still pointing to ERP inefficiencies as a drag on cash flow.
• •Vital Farms also went live in November 2025. Shareholders have since filed a securities class action alleging the company described the rollout as smoother than it was. The allegations are unproven, but the lawsuit itself is the lesson.

These are well-run companies with experienced integrators. That's my point. Go-live failures rarely come from bad software. They come from a go/no-go decision made on optimism instead of evidence.

Why January Go-Lives Are Especially Risky

• •The date is driven by the calendar, not readiness. "We have to be live for the new fiscal year" quietly becomes the requirement.
• •The holidays eat your testing and training. Key users take time off in December, exactly when final rehearsals and sign-offs should happen.
• •Year-end close collides with cutover. Finance is closing the old system while it's learning the new one.
• •Hypercare lands in your busiest quarter. If orders, invoicing or shipping break in January, you feel it in Q1 cash.

The Go/No-Go Decision Belongs to Leadership

Your integrator and project team should recommend. They shouldn't decide. They're too close to it, and they have every reason to say yes.

Before you approve a cutover, ask for evidence, not status colors:

• •Testing: Did end-to-end tests run on real, converted data, including your ugliest transactions? What's still open, and who signed off?
• •Rehearsals: How many full mock cutovers were completed, and did the last one hit its time window?
• •Data: Have customer, vendor, item and open-order balances been reconciled to the old system, line by line?
• •People: Can the people who take orders, ship product and send invoices do their jobs in the new system today?
• •Rollback: If day one goes badly, what is the plan, who makes the call and how long does it take?
• •Business continuity: What's the manual workaround for order entry and shipping, and has anyone practiced it?

Get a Second Set of Eyes Before It's Too Late

The most valuable thing I can tell a CEO six weeks before go-live is the truth. An independent readiness review takes a couple of weeks. It looks at the evidence, talks to the people doing the work and gives leadership a clear go, conditional go or no-go.

Sometimes the answer is "you're ready." Sometimes it's "move the date four weeks." Four weeks of delay is almost always cheaper than three weeks of not being able to ship.

And if you're a public company, have lenders or are heading toward a sale, keep what you say about the project in line with what the review found. Don't schedule an investor or board update in the middle of hypercare. (I wrote about the warning signs in ERP Implementation Failure: The Warning Signs Every CEO Misses.)

What to Do Next: A Checklist

• ☐Confirm the go-live date and the date the go/no-go decision will be made.
• ☐Write down the go/no-go criteria now, before anyone is emotionally committed to the date.
• ☐Ask for evidence of end-to-end testing and at least two full cutover rehearsals.
• ☐Reconcile converted data back to the legacy system and sign off on the results.
• ☐Check holiday schedules for key users, testers and the integrator's team.
• ☐Approve a rollback plan and a manual workaround for order-to-cash.
• ☐Line up an independent readiness review at least four to six weeks before cutover.
• ☐Plan what you'll tell customers, lenders and the board, and when.

Frequently Asked Questions

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